Tomorrow, I will conduct a lesson on pumpkins for my garden club students. It is one of my favorite lessons! Pumpkins are a great plant to utilize when explaining an annual life cycle. The fact that they go from seed to seed in one growing season is easily illustrated. Here are my posters: Since I…
Now that school is underway, students seem busier than ever. My youngest is an example. He has a full course load including AP classes, plays a varsity sport, and has a job as well. So far, he’s been juggling it all fairly well with the only side effects being those of tiredness and limited time…
Over the weekend I arrived home from a brief vacation in Southern California. My sister was a DNP conference with her students. I tagged along with her, and was able to visit one of our American deserts for the first time ever! It was something on my Bucket List! If you’d like to see photos…
What do you consider important for students to know? Is it the content in your class? Is it how to apply that content to everyday life? Or, might it be how to keep working through a problem they might encounter along the way? Fostering resilience is part of an educator’s job. It is also a…
Twice in the last week, I visited the school garden which I have been in charge of caring for since last October. I’ve been deadheading and weeding, alone and with a friend, to make the gardens presentable for the school open house, which is this evening. When I planted with students this past May, I told…
Yesterday was August fifth! I honestly do not know where this summer has gone! In the past, during most summers, I kept my boys busy with enrichment exercises to prevent what is commonly known as the summer slide. When they were younger this meant involvement in the library reading program, tracking all the books they…
For the first time ever, I got to teach a class during a summer school session today. It sounds kind of crazy but I have always wanted to teach summer school. For many years, I asked. For many years, nothing came of it. But, being at a different school this year, in a different district,…
For over ten years – almost the entire duration of time I led the Evergreen Garden Club at one of our district’s four elementary schools, I wanted to be involved in providing an enriching summer school experience on Monarchs or other seasonal horticultural topics. After all, our growing season in Wisconsin is short and what…
It was graduation weekend for my son’s high school senior class. While it was a wonderful occasion, there were some oddities. My sister not having a hotel room due to the location having a fire and not notifying them. (It all worked out – She was able to stay somewhere else & she was welcome…
Today is Slice of Life Tuesday and since most participants are educators that participate in this posting forum, I thought I would share about my experience of running for a vacant seat on our school board. We had a school board election last April. An incumbent who served for 20 years lost by 18 votes….