ZEELAND, Mich. — As the Holland Farmers Market prepares to open for the season Wednesday, students from Zeeland Public Schools’ Z-Quest school are wrapping up a project designed to help teachers bring sustainability lessons to life.
Z-Quest students have been partnering with the market to create a curriculum for field trips, giving educators ready-to-use lesson plans focused on environmental awareness, farming, and food systems. The initiative aims to solve a real-world challenge for the market — limited staffing for guided tours.
WATCH: Zeeland’s Z-Quest students create sustainability curriculum for Holland Farmers Market
“We've been working with the Holland Farmers Market to help develop their field trip curriculum, so that teachers who come either with their class or sign up for a field trip with a farmers market, they'll have some materials to use,” said Z-Quest teacher Marcy Hartzler.
Hartzler noted the market’s capacity for staff-led field trips is “really limited,” with only about one a day. Students responded by designing their own sustainability-focused lessons to fill the gap.
“It ties into what we've been learning this year too, with where different types of food come from and how that impacts the environment and animals,” Hartzler said. “We learned about the greenhouse gas system, so we've tied that in too, because agriculture has a really big impact on climate and climate change.”
On Monday, students presented their nearly finished plans at Cityside Middle School to get feedback from peers and educators.
“It’s really fun to collaborate and do something impacting the community and younger students’ lives with our ideas,” said eighth grader Araya Shirley. “It’s truly just amazing being able to create something and then have it implemented somewhere, especially when we’re implementing [project-based learning] and things that we have been doing since kindergarten.”
For some students, the hands-on learning style has been particularly engaging.
“I have ADHD, so it’s hard for me to focus, but this just keeps me engaged. I don’t sit down and get lectured. I walk around. I do experiments," said eighth grader Deacon Hartley. "It's like these fun little experiments that we have all come together to make sense in our brains. And I love it.”
Hartley added, “We’re all like a family together, so everyone knows everyone. ... It’s kind of like a family recipe that we created for the kids to learn.”
The curriculum is about 80 percent completed, and Hartzler said teachers could begin using it in the near future.
The Holland Farmers Market, located at the Eighth Street Market Place at 150 West 8th Street in downtown Holland, will open for the 2026 season at 8 a.m. Wednesday. The market will operate outdoors every Wednesday and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., rain or shine, featuring over 80 local farmers, specialty food vendors, and food trucks.
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