I started this morning reviewing some blog articles I wrote in 2012, 2013, and 2014 for a website I made for my elementary after-school garden club students and parents. Reading my own words brought back many fond memories of the years I led this group I founded in 2004. It ended in 2017, but then…
transformative teaching
Owned Treasures, Recently Found
Today is Slice of Life Tuesday! Thanks go to TwoWritingTeachers.org for creating this group and hosting it each week. I have participated in this supportive writing community since February of 2017. As we continue to clean out to ready ourselves for our move next month, I am finding enjoyment in reminiscing about things I’ve found…
Slice of Life Tuesday: Enrichment Learning through Experiential Lessons
When I started Evergreen Garden Club in the fall of 2004, its main purpose was to provide student enrichment through hands-on activities using an outdoor environment such as the school grounds. The first group, now adults in their mid-twenties, researched local butterfly species and host plants to enable a well thought out conversion of an…
Haiku Heaven
Wetland Celebration Today I was part of a group of Environmental Educators celebrating our Wetlands. We hosted fourth, fifth, and sixth graders from 9 – 2pm in thirty-minute stations. I had the pleasure of seeing 177 students, plus all their teachers today for lessons on Nature Poetry. Since our stations were only 30 minutes each,…
When Does Environmental Stewardship Start?
On a Saturday in mid-September, I was at large event for work. It was an event I organized. There were at least 125 people in attendance, probably more. It was an event to celebrate land conservation hosted by our local land trust and promoted by the state governing body of land trusts. It even was…
Going Out with Hope
Yesterday was my last day of work at a job I’ve only had a little more than 8 months. It was a job I wanted, a job I was given the opportunity to have, and a job in what I was educated to do – be an environmental educator. But, alas, the job was not…
Silent Sunday: Wisconsin’s First Official School Garden Day
Silent Sunday: Planting the Seed
Drawing on What I Know
Have any of you made a mood board? Well, I haven’t either but need to make one for one of my last assignments for grad school. It is to accompany a “Design for Optimal Learning” lesson that I create. Although I know what components I would want to make a design for optimal learning, choosing…
Lessons from a Home Maker Space
Just over a year ago, my husband bought a 3D printer for our house. Really, it was bought for my 18-year-old who will graduate from HS in a few months. He’s our inventor, our experimenter, our dreamer. Over the course of the last year, he’s put the 3D printer to good use. He played with…