Growing Plants, Hearts, and Minds

It's the last week of school, and honestly I didn't think I'd be writing a blog post this week. Since I will be teaching science to 3rd-5th graders next year, I have been packing up the classroom I've been teaching in for the past 16 years in preparation for my move to the science room downstairs. Monday I did a presentation for our school board on the global service learning activities through which our students have been learning and how they connected to my recent trip to Kenya. I have 3 presentations that I need to prepare for ISTE next week, and a presentation at the University of London next month that needs to be finished before I leave for Philadelphia.  It's been a crazy end of the school year, but after what I experienced this afternoon, I knew that I had to take a few minutes to share.

One of our kindergarten teachers, Lizabeth Conklin, has been working this year to create a community garden at our school. The premise of her project is to have students at the school learn through gardening, and to use the school gardens to grow fresh produce for our local food pantry. Her hard work has resulted in national recognition and grant money which will allow the project to expand next year.

Since learning that I will be teaching science next year, I have agreed to partner with Liz to teach science concepts through gardening. In addition, we have found partners in Kenya, the Dominican Republic, Maine, New Hampshire, Luxembourg, and Nepal for a global garden project next year that will have each group of students sharing their learning through gardening with the others. As a teacher who believes that learning through service projects should be the backbone of what we do in school, I am very excited about the possibilities for this project.

Next to our school is a small building owned by our local Fair Association.  For most of the year it is rented out by the Devereux Foundation as an adult day care center for individuals with disabilities.

As part of the garden project, Liz had contacted the directors of the program and asked if we could put a small garden behind their building so that those in the program could help with the gardening.  Today, I went with her and a group of 5th grade students to help plant a few tomato plants in that garden.

As the students finished getting the plants in the soil, we saw that there was no water source available outside the building. Liz went inside to ask if anyone would like to bring water outside and help water the garden. The response was amazing.

Soon, the men and women from the Devereux were taking turns watering and chatting with our students. both groups were sharing their knowledge of gardening with each other, introducing themselves, and having a great time. It was such a wonderful experience for everyone. As I walked back to the school with the kids I could hear them telling each other how happy they were to be a part of building this garden and collaboration.

Over the next few years, our students are going to learn a lot of math, science, language arts, and other content through gardening.  And, that's wonderful.

But, they are also going to learn a whole lot more about topics that are a whole lot more important.

This is what school should be.