Project Reflections
| Date | Place | Reflections |
| 10-4-05 | Computer Lab | I found some good information to aid me in teaching the children at Lincoln. |
| 10-5-05 | Library | I discussed with my teaching partner what we wanted to do in the class room, as well as collecting information on herbs and children. |
| 10-12-05 | Lincoln | I went to Lincoln to talk to michi, a teacher at Lincoln, about working in her classroom. when we arrived we saw her in the office and she said she would love for us to help out. We talked about what we wanted to do with the children. We discussed doing herb projects, working in the garden, and some plant study. She invited us to the school assembly on Tuesday, which sounded like a lot of fun. We made plans to attend the assembly and then come to her classroom. While we were there we also went to look at the garden. I felt somewhat overwhelmed considering I have not done much gardening in the past, however I also felt a great amount of excitement for learning the skills to maintain a garden. I was ready to jump in and get my hands dirty. |
| 10-18-05 | Lincoln | The Lincoln assembly was great! it felt wonderful to see a school work together like that. I've worked in public schools for seven years and have never see a school look, feel, and act like a family. It was great to sing with them and find out what the children had been up to in their classes. After the assembly I went up to the classroom. From the moment I walked in the door I was intimidated. I did not understand this since I have been working with children for so long, but then realized I've never really worked in a classroom setting before. I quickly settled in and felt much more at ease. We sat in during their circle time, then helped the kids with a math project (which I was terrified of because I'm horrible with math.) We mostly just wondered around helping the children when they need it. I really enjoyed the environment the children had. I've never seen a classroom that felt so comfortable before, they had wonderful, positive things on the walls, a fun wooden loft for playing, lots of space with sectioned areas, and only 19 children which did not seem like very many to me. |
| 10-19-05 | Lincoln | Our group met with the "garden managers" today. Only three people from the group were there at the begining of the meeting then one more showed up. I was glad we had that time with them since I don't have very much experience. I enjoyed one of the woman's energy and look forward to working with her, she seems very passionate about working with the children and having a wonderful garden experience. I must admit iI was not very excited about the project until today, I feel like I have a good direction to go to now. |
| 10-25-05 | Research |
This was really exciting for me. I put so much time and energy into learning all about these three plants. I wanted to know everything about them just incase one of the children asked me a question. I think the reason this was so exciting for me was because I do so much planning activities for kids in my job but I never get to do a real lesson plan. Even though I plan and carry out activities with kids all the time and I know things change and rarely go as you plan them, I still did not take that into consideration when I was planning this all out. For some reason I expected the plan to be followed precisely and for things to go perfectly smooth, but that all changed as soon as we spoke with Michi moments before we were suppose to start.
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| 10-26-05 | Lincoln | We carried out our lesson plan today a little differently than we had planned. I learned a lot about communication today. The garden manager had told me that we would be working with Michi’s class from 1-3pm. I checked with her twice to make sure she had set it up Michi. By what the garden manager told me I thought we would have michi’s whole class for two hours in the afternoon. Looking back at that now it seems rather silly that Michi would lust give us her whole class for 2 hours. Speaking with Michi moments before we are to carry out our lesson plans she tells us that she did not tell the manager that we could have the whole class, nor would it be for two hours. So after a while of Michi doing amazing juggling work we were about to carry out our lesson plan with smaller groups of children. We took one group out and planted garlic, then another group to harvest calendula, and a third group helped make the cookies. It was a lot of fun, and I think the children really enjoyed it too. |
| 11-2-05 | Lincoln |
We decided to just help out in the classroom today doing whatever Michi needed help with. This ended up being covering journals with the marble painting we did last week. I did not have much fun doing this. I felt a little frustrated and felt like I was more of a hindrance than a help. We had to work out how to cover the journals correctly. It felt like Amy and I were making suggestions and Michi had something else in mind. We finally figures out a system, but I spent the last hour almost working in the teacher work room laminating and cutting. It was nice to offer myself for whatever she need instead of asking for her to rearrange her schedule to accommodate our activities. Now it feels more like a mutual relationship instead of us asking of her. |
| 11-9-05 | Lincoln |
Today we went to Michi’s class to make candy! This time theTransitions were much smoother, and it seemed Amy and I was both more comfortable with the kids. We took kids in groups of four to harvest the fennel and the calendula, and to mix and make the candy. I had a lot of fun doing this today; however I felt more frustrated in the garden. It may be that the kids are getting used to us, but they seemed to not listen as much in the garden. This was hard for me because I really struggle with wanting to teach kids to respect nature and they don’t seem to care much. For some reason I guess I thought it would be different with these kids. But the kids enjoyed getting to make their own candy even thou it wasn’t what they were necessarily expecting. Today I also realized that I would like to do more advanced work with them. I want to keep it fun with the activities, just incorporate more “academic” learning as well.
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| 11-10-05 | Licoln Garden | I went and worked in the garden at Lincoln today. I mostly weeded. I also harvested the rest of the calendula and pulled them out to prepair the bed for something new. It was a good closure to my time with calendula this fall, it was very nice because I was there by myself and there were not kids outside. It was very peaceful and i really enjoyed it. I also spent some time getting to know some of the other plants in the garden, because I had not done that yet. |
| 11-26-05 | Burning Ritual | |
| 11-30-05 | presentation | It felt good to work on the presentation today. I was feeling a bit stressed out and unprepaired. I baked the cookies and Amy and I were ablr to practice with the picture the way she has it on her computer, it may be different when we do it in class, we'll see. |
