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SEL Activity for the winter season, LifeLab Garden Educator Certifications, and building school-wide culture with your garden!
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December 2021
 
SEL Activity: Winter Sound Maps
 

While I love the holiday season, December always seems so hectic and rushed; it can take its toll on me. The same can be true for students this time of year, with holiday excitement can also come anxiety. This month’s SEL activity, Winter Sound Maps, is a great way to slow down, pause to connect with nature, and be present in the moment.

Each student will need paper, a clipboard or something to write on, and a pencil or pen. Find a comfortable place to sit outside and spread out. Have the students mark an “X” in the center of the paper, representing the listener on the map. Ask them to close their eyes and just listen to the sounds around them. Do this for a minute or so just to get acclimated to the sounds. Instruct them to keep listening, but now start recording the sounds they hear on the piece of paper, placing them on the paper in relation to the listener's position, mapping the sound's location. The sounds can be represented by words, symbols or drawings, but simple is best, so students can focus on what they hear. I like to do this for about five minutes. Some sounds may be heard more than once; simply keep a tally of how many times the sound is heard. After five minutes, students can share and compare the sounds they heard. You can challenge them to think about what would happen if they were sitting somewhere else, how sounds may be different at a different time of day or during a different season.

This is a great activity to calm and focus students before an outdoor lesson as well, and the great thing is, it can be repeated multiple times throughout the year with a totally different experience each time.

 
Teachers Earn Certification
 
Congratulations to those teachers across the nation who were part of the first cohort to become Life Lab-Certified Garden Educators. Amy Bowman and Doug Vernon, our Plants for Human Health Institute STEM Education duo, completed the certification as did three teachers in the Cabarrus County School System.
Megan Charlton
District STEM Coach K-8
JN Fries Middle and Beverly Hills Elementary

Q: What does being a Certified Life Lab Educator mean to you?

A: It means that I am qualified to lead a garden program and teachers are more confident in my ability to instruct them and their students on creating and maintaining a garden. I used to joke that I had two black thumbs and two school gardens. Now I can confidently say I have two school gardens and I know what I am doing! I have significantly increased my “big picture” garden leadership knowledge so that our program can remain sustainable.
Janet Childress
GROW Lab & Integrated Gardens Facilitator, K-5
A.T. Allen Elementary

Q: What does being a Certified Life Lab Educator mean to you?

A: The certification course proved to me that my role as a Garden Educator was valued and worthy of professional development tailored to my specific niche. The coaching sessions helped me to capture the essence of my vision for our school garden program, bring into view a clear focus of our purpose and mission, and outline the next steps for the future of our gardens.
Jill Staton
K-5 STEM Teacher
Patriots STEM Elementary

Q: How did the certification benefit you?

A: I am able to teach others about the importance of the garden and human impact. The lessons that were created and shared with us from Life Lab are high quality and adaptable for standards across the content areas. This enables me to reach many different areas with all of my students. This course has given me confidence in how to use the garden to teach and validates that school gardens are truly a benefit to students and staff.
A certified garden educator inspires a love of learning, an appreciation of healthy food, and a connection to nature in every child through garden-based education! Throughout the program, participants learned how to set up their garden classroom as a safe and welcoming space that honors diversity and inclusion while supporting each child’s social and emotional wellbeing.They learned how to use a garden to breathe life into standards-based lessons based on Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and Common Core Language Arts and Math. Experience with tried-and-true Life Lab lessons and recipes for grades K-8 gave participants an opportunity to explore effective ways to teach nutrition and encourage kids to eat more fruits and vegetables. In addition, the courses explore different, sustainable school garden program models; planning tools to align year-round garden activities with academic and garden care goals; methods for assessing garden programs; and strategies for increasing funding.

The certification program consisted of four, 4-week courses on the following topics: Building Connections in the Garden, The Garden as a Classroom, Plant to Plate, and School Garden Sustainability. Each course consists of asynchronous assignments as well as synchronous Zoom sessions. Registration is not yet open for Spring 2022, but find more information here, including cost, availability of graduate course credit, and financial assistance opportunities.

 
Building Culture
 
One new “ah ha” take-away from our completion of the Life Lab-Certified Garden Educator program was the tremendous importance of establishing events that build culture around the school garden. An annual pumpkin toss at an elementary school in Atlanta, Georgia, is one example that stood out. After Halloween, students (and even former students) bring their pumpkins from home and get to throw their pumpkins from the second floor of the school to the ground. While it certainly makes a big mess, more importantly, it’s a big addition to the school compost pile that helps sustain rich growing media in the garden. This single event is now a fun tradition that has helped establish a culture that the garden is important to their school.

Closer to home, Patriots Elementary School in Concord, NC, is promoting and establishing school garden culture by having a parade just before Thanksgiving. STEM teacher and parade organizer, Jill Staton, started this tradition the year before Covid impacted our world. She followed a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade model with students studying the history of the parade, reading the book, Balloons over Broadway, and learning about the science behind balloons, a mainstay of the Macy’s parade. The school parade was a real hit with the students.

Not allowing Covid to totally thwart their plans in the second year, they had a virtual parade. This year the parade returned to the school campus featuring the
school garden with a portion of each grade level dressing up in fruit, vegetable and flower costumes that they made from cardboard and other repurposed materials. The rest of the student body (1,000+) lined the sidewalks around the school as the parade made its way through the mass of excited onlookers. We (Amy and Doug) were asked and honored to be Grand Marshalls for the parade.

The schoolwide theme for Patriots Elementary School this year is, “Here We Grow Again.” Jill has plans to keep the garden at the forefront of their planning as the parade was
wildly successful this year. What a great way to build culture around the school garden by having a parade that involves the whole school and celebrates the tremendous value of the school garden.

A great way to begin building culture around your school garden is to think about how you can incorporate the school garden into schoolwide activities that already take place at your school. Here are a few more ideas for building culture around the garden.

  • Have a read aloud or share bedtime stories in the garden during book fair week
  • Include a tour of the garden on back-to-school night
  • Host a GrandFriends tea party (grandparents or other special friends)
  • Include the garden as a part of your school workdays (create a list of chores that parents and families can do on teacher workdays)
  • Plant and plan for gift giving occasions, such as Secretary’s Day, Mother’s Day, or Staff/Custodian appreciation
  • Share thank you flower bouquets
  • Offer a pop-up Farmers Market for the car rider line
  • Host graduation celebrations in the garden
  • Read Across America…in the garden

We would love to hear about your culture building activities and events to add to our list. You can find our email addresses at the bottom of every newsletter.
 
Find more School Garden Resources on our website:
Questions? Contact us!

Amy Bowman • asbowman@ncsu.edu

Doug Vernon • dpvernon@ncsu.edu


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