.png)
Aviva Magder-Pascaris (she/her)
For 6 years, Aviva has worked to use education as a vehicle for change in not only Pre K - 12 environments, but libraries, farms, and gardens. Centering anti-colonial pedagogies in her curriculum design, Aviva supports the development of our systems change and justice-oriented curriculum offered on a sliding scale on Start:Empowerment's Curriculum Suite and in schools across NYC.
Based on unceded, occupied Munsee-Canarsie Lenape land
(Brooklyn, New York)
Aviva's Story
Contributions
Aviva joins S:E as an Environmental Justice Curriculum Specialist. She is collaborating with the team to develop a 5-module comprehensive environmental curriculum for high school students.
Aviva is a recent graduate of Bard College’s Center for Environmental Policy. Her Master’s work in Environmental Education took place at the Red Hook Playgroup, a small community preschool, where she researched anti-colonial pedagogies and practices in early childhood garden-based education. She received the 2022 Aldo Leopold Award for Exemplary Community Service while at Bard.
As the previous Director of Operations at Sprout Up, she spearheaded the creation of a farm-based food justice education program with White Feather Farm in the Catskills. She also worked at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Brooklyn Public Library, and Poughkeepsie Farm Project, assisting with educational programs for K-12 students. In 2021 she published two blogs: Seeding a Revolution: Sovereignty and Connection in the Food System, and Seeds will Reunite Us: A Call to Rekindle your Relationship with Seeds.
Aviva divides her time between New York City and her family’s home in the Hudson Valley, NY, where she tends the garden. She enjoys ceramics, rock climbing, identifying plants, saving seeds, and playing with her Weimeraner, Luna.
[Coming Soon!]