REFLECTION

Resources Parent email for seed exchange    

 My genius hour plan is to educate myself to become a flower farmer when I retire from teaching in four years.  The purpose of my project is reflected in my class.  I already did a seed project with the students where we distributed 16 varieties of fall flowers to everyone at our two campuses.  From this we are planning to do a plant exchange in the spring.  It has also been mentioned that we raffle a garden planting for a staff member.  We would then ask the staff what plants they would like and ask others to donate these from their garden and then we will plant them for the staff member. Another talk is can we get a greenhouse for our campus.  This will be dependent after the agriculture building is finished and the growing capacities that are available to use.

When we did the seeds, the students were comfortable with the process.  They would get gloves and the flower heads and start.  They worked and collaborated in groups with limited instructions.  Some labeled the packets, others worked on the computer to design the catalog.  They enjoyed it because they would ask if there were more seeds each day.  Keep in mind that I had five classes doing this throughout the day.  Challenges come with communication and participation for our next project. We will need to campaign early on for the plant exchange for it to be successful.  Need to also get the information so the students can get community service hours for participation.  We are going to do the plant sale in late April or early May.

Introducing the idea, is not necessary because they decided on the next project when we were collecting seeds.  Although it does align with my content, Biology, we are moving towards genetics.  The students will be exposed to plants in genetics like the pea plant.  So, the plant exchange would be an additional workload on the students.  I did not give them a grade for the seed project or any directions other than an initial discussion of an idea and we went with it.  The students problem solved along the way.  For instance we needed an organized way to store the seeds.  So the students brought in shoe boxes, and this worked great. The community efforts in the first project were awesome and I anticipate that the next one will be the same.

We have parent teacher conferences, so I am going to mention next week that we will create an email to staff and parents about our upcoming plant exchange.  The students will need to figure out a way to record who is participating in the exchange and what are they exchanging?  Also, where they will bring the plants.  How should the plants be packaged for another to transport?  So I plan next week to have the students participate in a Plant Planning Event.  I will throw these questions out in our thinking tank and see what the student comes up with.  I am looking forward to it, I am definitely biased to gardening with flowers.  I hope I can build my relationship with the Agriculture teachers to grow produce to share.  My overall goal is to help the students build on their confidence,kindness, compassion and a sense of community.  They need to learn how to volunteer and do things for others.  I am doing this through plants and flowers alike.