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In this article, author Suzie Boss illustrates the benefits
for both teachers and students when a school garden is installed. Holiday Heights Elementary school in Fort
Worth, Texas is a Title I school with about 700 students and a school garden
that offers hands on learning experience.
The garden coordinator/teacher at the school, Scott Smith, uses the
garden to enhance his math and science lessons, providing a level of engagement
and interest he had been missing in his “rut” over the last few years. He says that the students have little
experience with gardening or outdoor work and it’s refreshing and new for
them. He tries to use the garden as much
as possible in his lessons. Instead of
showing the students a diagram of the water cycle, he takes the class outside
to view whatever aspects of it are present in the garden. Instead of calculating the volume of a
rectangular prism from a worksheet in the classroom, he poses the problem of
how much soil is needed to fill one of the raised flowerbeds in the garden.
There are a few steps to take to ensure the overall and
long-term success of a school garden.
First, there has to be engagement on all sides of the educational world,
with students, teachers, and parents participating in the garden effort. There also needs to be a level of flexibility
and subsequent problem solving when gardening.
It’s important to remember that all plants/designs may not take or
work right away. There also needs to be someone in
charge of the garden at the school that is motivated to work on all aspects of
the project, chief among them garnering interest and involvement from the other
teachers. Finally, it’s important for
the long-term involvement in the garden that every success, whether big or
small, is recognized and celebrated.
Those successes help build continuing interest and involvement from
every aspect of the school community.
This garden was made possible by the non-profit organization
REAL School Gardens. I would be
interested to see these gardens in action!
Boss, S. (n.d.). How to Grow an Engaging Learning
Environment. Edutopia. Retrieved May 27, 2014, from
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/how-to-grow-engaging-environment-suzie-boss
I love this blog post. We have a school garden at our school, which I currently manage. We had a Master Gardener come in and create a plan for the space we selected. She also created a diagram and told us which Michigan Native plants would work well in the area. Then we had our Go Green club lay the mulch and do the planting. Everything went according to plan and the kids do all the upkeep and weeding, but unfortunately very few teachers actually use the garden. I wonder if Suzie Boss has any advice on getting the teachers engaged!
ReplyDeleteThis blog post is a perfect example of "hands on" or "real life experiences" and I love it. If we really think about it, being able to put into action what is being taught enhances learning, enabling the student to retain the information. This is a clever idea, I just have to figure out how I can work gardening into my course...hmm. It's creative teachers that make learning fun for students.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this blog entry. I am currently working with a Master Gardener at my school and we are planning on recreating the agriscience program that ended in 1992. Since we are in a very small, rural area, we thought it would be beneficial to work this program into the curriculum because many students will be farming when they are older. Finding new ways to engage students and develop a pride in something is what we need more of.
ReplyDelete