It is the beginning of my 7th year at P.K. Yonge DRS. I will be teaching standard and honors Biology. I will be embarking on a journey with my students as we implement a Toyota Tapestry Grant that I received this year entitled "Educating Sustainability and Social Responsibility through P.K. Yonge's Community Garden and Farmers' Market." Groups of students will be assigned 16 square feet of vegetable gardening space that they will design, plant, maintain and harvest. They will be selling their goods to the PK Yonge community and the proceeds will be donated to St. Francis House, Gainesville's downtown homeless shelter. In addition, students will be interviewing homeless in Gaineville in order to increase tolerance. Students will write the stories of these homeless people through their language arts' classes and publish them electronically. To chronicle the project, groups of students will have their own wiki which they will use to create and communicate their findings as they institute scientific research into their square foot gardening plot.
It sounds amazing and I am SOOOOO excited about getting started!
- The potential impact that this project has for my students' science kinowledge and for their social awareness of a group of people who are marginalized is tremendous.
- The potential impact that this project has for aiding a not-for-profit organization in these turbulent economic times is encouraging.
- My hopefullness for working closely with my colleagues, particularly Ms. Jen Cheveallier, 9th grade language arts' teacher, and Mr. Shane Carnley, 9th grade Algebra I teacher, as I begin to implement this project, continues to excite me.
- The opportunity to have community guidance for myself and my students with the help of Dr. Rose Koenig, Agronomy lecturer from the University of Florida and successful organic farmer, and Ms. Christine Kelly Begazo, Indian River County Extension Director who continues to work with a farm that supports an orphanage in Honduras, a relationship that she established from her years with Peace Corps.
As my students will be required to chronicle their journey through their wikis, I too, will chronicle my journey, modeling my expectations for my students. It is my hope to make a lifelong impact on my students as they develop their ideas about sustainability, social responsibility and tolerance. It is also my hope that this blog will serve as a global connection, so that others around the world may be inspired to take action locally and improve the lives of others and themselves.
