Tameshia Farley – 7th-8th Science at Dickey Hill Elementary Middle School – Baltimore, MD
Tameshia has been a secondary teacher for 16 years in Baltimore County and City. She always has and currently resides in the City, and she has spent her childhood attending Baltimore City Schools and wanted to give back to her community by teaching and reaching out to the youth.
Tameshia earned a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Biology and a Master’s of Arts degree in Teaching. She uses her knowledge of food nutrition that she learned with her Bachelor’s degree to teach her community how to read nutrition labels on foods through classes at the library or neighborhood meetings. Tameshia feels that it is very important for everyone to know how to make healthy decisions when shopping for food for their families. She lives and works in food insecure neighborhoods and believes that education is key when combating childhood obesity.
She loves connecting with the families in her school building, and for this reason she is the Family Community Engagement Liaison at Dickey Hill Elementary Middle School. As advisor to the Green Team, she has written several small grants, but her proudest one was to start an Outdoor Learning Classroom at the school. It includes a vegetable garden, a Little Free Library, and more. A major goal for this upcoming school year is for the Green Team to grow veggies to make a salad in the garden and share it with their family and the community. Tameshia wants them to learn the physical and mental health benefits of each vegetable so they can make a connection to food, mind, body, and soul.
While Tameshia is doing all of what she loves, she loves to do it with her family: her 10-year-old daughter and her husband. She also loves doing anything related to science and growing her own little vegetable garden in pots.