Welcome!
I decided to start keeping a record of my adventures teaching at an International school in Shenzhen, China. This is my second year living here in Shenzhen, and my first year teaching at the International School of Nanshan Shenzhen (formerly the International School of Sino Canada). I was further inspired to create a blog when I decided to start a school garden this year. I am going to be teaching Environmental Science, middle school health and science and personal growth/family studies.
When I was home in New Brunswick over the summer, I took the opportunity to visit the Falls Brook Center in Knowesville, New Brunswick where I was fortunate enough to spend a couple of hours with Emily Shapiro who is working there as an Organic Agriculture Coordinator. Emily began her experience at Falls Brook last summer as an intern and was hired on full-time after her 6 month stint. She was able to provide me with a wealth of information and ideas from her own personal experience working with women and children in Honduras to start organic gardens.
I have always been interested in gardening, although my parents have always been the ones who have actually grown anything. One of the many scoldings I received as a hyperactive toddler arose due to my penchant for picking and sometimes eating the under-ripe peppers, peas, carrots, etc.
I can always remember my parents
having a large garden, until we moved from suburban Florenceville, to bucolic Carlow where efforts were made to maintain the same type of lush crop, but were quickly thwarted by the local wildlife which could clear a garden faster than my chubby little hands ever did.
Over the past few years, my parents have resorted to constructing raised beds around the property which seems to have provided some respite from the hungry faunal neighbours.
I believe my first real efforts as a horticulturalist would have began when I lived on Windsor Street in Fredericton with a rowdy group of boys who used my make-shift garden as a bottle-smashing receptacle. Needless to say, my induction into gardening did not leave me very motivated to try again. I believe the only crops that were harvested were some meager sprigs of lettuce; enough for a few salads that I DID NOT share with my housemates, some very sad carrots and a few hot peppers. Maybe not so bad for a novice who was living with seven apes?
Coming away from the visit to Falls Brook I felt absolutely inspired and excited about my plans to implement some sort of gardening into the courses I will be teaching in China this year. I did manage to grow some small basil plants, as well as mint, coriander, and lavender outside my room on the balcony the previous year. My efforts paled in comparison to the “Jones” next door (aka Lana & Luke from Newfoundland) who grew huge basil and tomato plants.
I decided to start keeping a record of my adventures teaching at an International school in Shenzhen, China. This is my second year living here in Shenzhen, and my first year teaching at the International School of Nanshan Shenzhen (formerly the International School of Sino Canada). I was further inspired to create a blog when I decided to start a school garden this year. I am going to be teaching Environmental Science, middle school health and science and personal growth/family studies.
When I was home in New Brunswick over the summer, I took the opportunity to visit the Falls Brook Center in Knowesville, New Brunswick where I was fortunate enough to spend a couple of hours with Emily Shapiro who is working there as an Organic Agriculture Coordinator. Emily began her experience at Falls Brook last summer as an intern and was hired on full-time after her 6 month stint. She was able to provide me with a wealth of information and ideas from her own personal experience working with women and children in Honduras to start organic gardens.
I have always been interested in gardening, although my parents have always been the ones who have actually grown anything. One of the many scoldings I received as a hyperactive toddler arose due to my penchant for picking and sometimes eating the under-ripe peppers, peas, carrots, etc.
I can always remember my parents
having a large garden, until we moved from suburban Florenceville, to bucolic Carlow where efforts were made to maintain the same type of lush crop, but were quickly thwarted by the local wildlife which could clear a garden faster than my chubby little hands ever did.
Over the past few years, my parents have resorted to constructing raised beds around the property which seems to have provided some respite from the hungry faunal neighbours.
I believe my first real efforts as a horticulturalist would have began when I lived on Windsor Street in Fredericton with a rowdy group of boys who used my make-shift garden as a bottle-smashing receptacle. Needless to say, my induction into gardening did not leave me very motivated to try again. I believe the only crops that were harvested were some meager sprigs of lettuce; enough for a few salads that I DID NOT share with my housemates, some very sad carrots and a few hot peppers. Maybe not so bad for a novice who was living with seven apes?
Coming away from the visit to Falls Brook I felt absolutely inspired and excited about my plans to implement some sort of gardening into the courses I will be teaching in China this year. I did manage to grow some small basil plants, as well as mint, coriander, and lavender outside my room on the balcony the previous year. My efforts paled in comparison to the “Jones” next door (aka Lana & Luke from Newfoundland) who grew huge basil and tomato plants.
Before my visit to Falls Brook, I had already started to plan how I would implement my gardening project with my classes this year. Ideally, I would like to have a plot or a raised bed for each class which would include one each for Grades 6, 7 and 8, and another for the High School Environmental Science elective class. The more I thought about and planned this project, the more I realized that it can touch on almost every aspect of the courses I will be teaching this year. I have been assigned to teach Grade 6, 7, and 8 Science, Grade 12 Environmental Science, and Grade 6 and 8 Health. From pollination, to soil composition, composting, nutrition, plant structure, traditional and cultural importance of food, the water cycle, the sun – the ideas and course relevancies were simply astounding!
As I spoke to Emily, I was enthusiastically scribbling down ideas for various activities I can have the kids participate in and came up with numerous lesson plans to help make this project relevant to all 6 courses I am teaching.
I hope to have the kids research the types of vegetables that they enjoy, or any they know of that may be culturally significant to their personal backgrounds. I will be teaching at an International school, so this will be a great opportunity to show the worldwide benefits of organic gardening and how important food is to every culture. I would want them to have a gardening notebook in which they could record dates and observations they make about progress, weather, germination, planning and reflection. For students who may arrive in the classroom with difficulties speaking, reading and understanding English, I think many of the activities I would like to try will allow for them to use pictures and visual aids if they are experiencing difficulty.
Emily suggested starting off with some plants that will grow quickly so that the kids will be enthusiastic about a potential year-long project right when they see results right away.
I have a feeling that many of these kids have very little experience with the outdoors and certainly very few would have any idea of what it would be like to walk outside your home and collect the food you will eat for dinner directly from your own garden. I can recall asking my Grade 12 Environmental Science class at the Chinese High School last year about their ‘lawns’ (something about how often they water them). I was met with raised eyebrows and faces of complete confusion from the few who were awake. They were so unfamiliar with a concept of a lawn that they didn’t even recognize this word in English. Once translated, they were still like, “Uhhh….no one has one of those.” Recalling this story to people back in Canada, I have encountered similar grimaces of confusion; “They all live in apartment buildings? Don’t those have lawns outside of them?” When my family saw me literally roll around in a patch of grass on our huuuuge lawn (which I am so thankful for) they understood.
The lush, clean, vastness of rural Canada is something many of us certainly take for granted. I hope I can show these students and maybe even their families that this type of project can be easy, fun, healthy, interesting, and great for the environment.
