I am currently a science teacher for grades 6-12. I teach a variety of science subjects to bring out student curiosities and questions.
“A garden is a great teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust”.-(Gertrude Jekyll)
Our students are low-income and many are in foster care.
Unfortunately, some have had to see things that no child should have to go through. Others have been previously "given-up on" or "past along" over the years. However, even with all these circumstances, these kids show an innate ability to want to learn and feed their minds. Our school is great at catering to this hunger and accommodates with whatever we can to better their learning experience. I am in a classroom that has bunnies, guinea pigs, fish, turtles, and frogs that the students are responsible for caring for on a daily basis. This teaches the students that other thing depend on them for success. I want to start a garden project that will allow the student to not only apply their knowledge toward plants, but will also give them a sense of accomplishment that they may not have had in the past. A barrier that needs to be broken down is the mentality that these are lost students.
My Project
The tillers will provide our students with the ability to be ability to start the garden every year and calculate how many rows and distances are needed for the plants. The shovels, spades, and hand tools will be used when we are planting seeds and then will transition to when we are transplanting the plants into the garden and around for landscaping. The gloves will be utilized by protecting the student's hands while they are working. The wheelbarrows will aid in helping us transport plants to different parts of the garden and will also aid in moving rich soil to other areas. The hoses will be used to water the garden with either the collected rain water or water source from the building. These tools will teach our students that gardening is an important skill in life, obtained along with the importance of learning photosynthesis, different types of plants and how they grow, and how to identify those plants.
I definitley think this garden has the potential to change my students' lives for the better because they will take pride in something and have the stability that so many of them lack in their home lives.
I strongly believe in the old saying, "If you give a man a fish he eats for a day, but teach him to fish and you teach him for life." This is a life lesson that I think all students should obtain sometime in their life. They will see success and learn to change their failures.
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