Jane Says

Heard Jane Fishman read from her book and speak on guerrilla gardening tonight.

Lessons: be abnormal, take risks, do something marginally illegal and positive for the thrill of doing good.  Also, cooking broccoli is easy (hot water, strain, salt & pepper - eat).

Kids need more Garden and less Cafeteria.  Amen, and amen.

Gardening to the Standards

Here's a short video on using gardening to teach. Enjoy!

How does your garden grow?

Today I finished up a Prezi on how gardening connects to science, math, and reading standards.

It was a lot of work.

Suffice it to say that you could teach much of what you need to teach in these subjects out in the garden.  Plenty of exceptions, sure, but most of the life science and earth science standards are out there.  The mistake we teachers make (me included, I confess) is teaching exclusively from textbooks and forsaking the hands-on experiences that make learning real.

Don't get me wrong - I'm an avid reader.  For example, I'm on a Bob Marley/reggae kick right now, and I've already consumed six books on the subject.  But I also learned a few Marley songs on guitar, and even tried my hand at writing a reggae tune of my own.

So I wouldn't say "Learn not from books," but rather, "Learn not from books alone!"