Teaching Days

The primary goal of our trip to England was to teach lessons at four different schools. The first was Brandelhow Primary School. I got to co-teach in a 3rd-year classroom where we did a lesson about apples. We read a story and had kids act out the different parts and showed kids the star in the center of an apple. We also had them taste apples. We're not allowed to take pictures with the kids for obvious reasons, but I've included a few pictures of their schoolyard garden.

The Minnesota Schoolyard Gardens Conference

This past Friday I had the amazing opportunity to attend the Minnesota Schoolyard Gardens Conference at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. I was even more lucky to have my attendance paid for by my university department. The whole conference was incredibly eye-opening to me because until now I haven't really been terribly sure where I want to go with my degree. Hearing all the speakers and connecting with people in the field that is schoolyard garden education has given me a better focus on what I might be able to do for a career. I've always known that educating people about growing their own food and helping them learn about how to care for the earth was something I wanted to pursue. Now I'm not only affirmed in that, but I have been given more of a direction towards what I might be able to do specifically.

The day started out in the largest hall in the Arboretum where, from 8:30 to 11:30, all of the attendees listened to a few short speeches (two of which were given by the heads of the State Department of Agriculture and the State Department of Education) and the keynote speaker, John Fisher of Life Lab. He not only had some amazing stories about what that organization had accomplished, but also really drove home why we need to reconnect kids to where their food comes from. Kids who grow their own food are much more likely to eat that food. Doesn't matter if it's strawberries or arugula. Kids who garden also have a much better understanding of nutrition which is incredibly important in a country where 17% of youth are obese. Gardens also introduce curiosity into their classes which, in turn, fuel the 4 C's: Creativity, Critical Thinking, Communication and Collaboration. After John Fisher, a young entrepreneur from the Twin Cities, Immanuel Jones spoke about his venture, Eco City. It was incredibly inspiring for me to see someone my age going out and starting a movement to get kids in not the best area of town back to the earth and growing food for themselves and their families.

After the first half of the conference was over, we broke for lunch. This was a great time to sit down and discuss the opening speakers with my classmates and explore the Arboretum visitor center a little more. A few rooms were reserved for organizations and schools that set up tables and presentations so we browsed those and got some awesome free stuff along the way. Some seed catalogs, a gorgeously bound copy of the Minnesota Agriculture in the Classroom School Gardening curriculum, free zuchetta seeds, and some promotional material. I also explored their little glass conservatory where tons of orchids were in bloom. I've included my pictures at the end of the post.

See more below!!

The rest of the afternoon was organized into three sessions where you could choose which talk you wanted to attend. The first presentation I went to was by the garden educator for the Columbia Heights School District. She talked about you can literally teach everything with a garden. Math, English, sciences of course and social studies in a garden in very creative ways. The second session was partially presented by Midwest Food Connection and was part presentation, part brainstorming session about how you can incorporate diversity and culture into a school garden. Both of these presentations were incredibly eye-opening to me because it shows how creative you can get with a school garden and still teach to the graduations standards of your home state.

I also met some really incredible people from all over the state and country. Emily Kitchen from Cornell University connected me to an awesome group of people who've organized themselves into the group Emergent on Facebook. The garden educator from Columbia Heights really gave me a good idea of what I might have to do to with my education to get into a field like this (can you say teaching license and Master Gardener certification?).
If you're interested in learning more about school gardens, look up your local school districts and see if they're doing projects to get gardens into their schools and districts and if they need help doing so. In the meantime, enjoy my pictures from the arboretum.

One of my favorites: The Happy Dancer orchid.

The main lobby of the arboretum visitor center.

Fairy gardens!

New Semester, New Classes!

Hello all! Apologies for being quiet on the blog front lately, but the beginning of the semester has kept me with very little free time for blogging. (Pro tip: Follow me on Twitter, I'm much more active there in busy times than on my blog!) But now that I have a quieter night to myself, I get to sit down and attempt to capture your interest with the new classes I'm taking.
First up, we have Successful School Gardens. If you saw my last post, you'll know that I'm traveling to England over spring break in March to learn about and teach in schools there with school gardens. This class runs for the whole semester, so we'll be preparing for our trip, as well as writing the lesson plans for teaching a class to students in multiple schools there. After we come back from London, we'll be paired up with schools here in the Twin Cities and will be teaching lessons about apples and microgreens to K-12 students. All the schools we will be paired with have existing school garden programs so we can learn how they work as well. I don't have too much to report on this since I've only been to the class once. It only meets once per week and the first class got cancelled due to extreme cold. (Don't even get me started on how cold it's been in Minnesota this winter!) This class also has a blog so I'll post links to those updates when they start rolling in.
Next up is Organic Farm Management. This is a class that really ties together a lot of things I find interesting. The first thing is, obviously, food. We're learning how to best grow good food in the climate we live in. The second thing, is organic farming. This class works specifically with the "Cornercopia" Student Organic Farm on campus to help them start a lot of the produce that they raise and sell over the course of the summer. Expect a lot of pictures from this class once we start growing all of those.

One of the seedlings from our seedling identification lab. Hard to tell it's an eggplant when it's that small!

Plant Physiology is the most lab intensive courses out of everything I'm taking. The course is actually classified as a "Writing Intensive" course (we need a certain number of these in order to graduate) so a lot of emphasis is put on scientific writing for lab reports. Most of our lab work is focused on environmental effects on crops such as amount of light, nutrient deficiencies, heat/cold, and how all of this affects the plant's growth. We've got a lab going right now testing germination and growth of plants with 16 hours of sun, 8 hours of sun and zero hours of sun. Pretty easy to tell what's going to happen, but the results are interesting to watch nonetheless.
Last but not least is "Sustainable People, Sustainable Planet". This is the only non-Horticulture class that I'm taking this semester and I LOVE it. We talk and read about sustainability as it relates to all different parts of life. Social justice, economy, environment, food systems, you name it. We've only been in class for around three weeks and I've already learned so much. My next post is probably going to be a bunch of stuff I've learned so far that I think everyone should be aware of. Our readings are incredibly interesting as well, so I'll definitely start posting links to those on here and on my Twitter account for you all to check out. Most are very accessible and thought-provoking reads. One big thing we started out looking at is planetary boundaries. I've included a diagram below. It's pretty self-explanatory, but basically the outer ring is the ceiling of where we should keep ourselves to stay within the Earth's resources and the inner ring is the floor that we should be above in terms of poverty, individual rights, education, etc.

Then this is where we are in terms of the inner circle. This means we're below where we should be when it comes to these things.



And then this is where we are in terms of the outer circle (the planetary boundaries) for things related to the environment and our impact on it.



Quite the difference, huh? This class has definitely put a lot of things in perspective for me. There's a lot I still have to learn about sustainability, but I really hope after this class I know how to communicate these ideas to people better so we can all work together to help change the way we interact with the natural world.
And that's all folks! You'll likely see more class related blog posts coming soon, and in the meantime don't forget to follow me on Twitter and Pinterest to keep up with my day to day activities and see what interesting things I've found around the web!