REVIEWS I loved doing projects like this with
older kids and then having them share/ apply their knowledge by reading their books to a younger audience, for instance reading buddies.
Science: Through comparison look at interior
Alaska as an ecosystem and analyze how the drastic changes in daylight and darkness effect the biology of the organisms that live there. Compare that to a different latitude and how more balanced daylight might affect the ecology there.
Social Studies: Again through comparison look at
how the daylight & darkness effect the traditions, daily rituals & life patterns of people at northern latitudes vs your own latitude or one completely different.
Harmony Roll is a parent and educator with an M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction, living in Alaska. She is passionate about the power of teaching through making connections to the places we live.
The Learning Garden: Ecology, teaching, and transformation.
by Veronica Gaylie (2009). New York: Peter Lang. 216 pp.
Reviewed by Julia Ostertag S
chool gardens are currently spreading across Canadian schoolyards and
researchers have documented the positive contributions that school gardens can make to students’ overall academic success and social well-being (Blair, 2009; Desmond, Grieshop, & Subramaniam, 2004), in addition to providing environ- mental experiences. Teacher education about school gardens, however, remains under- researched and under-developed. Without adequate teacher training, school gardens will likely remain marginalized and difficult to implement. Veronica Gaylie, in The Learning Garden:
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Ecology, Teaching, and Transformation, not only researches the history of teaching and learning about school gardens but, more importantly, explores it with her student teachers at the University of British Columbia–Okanagan in the context of a small campus school garden she founded. Her central questions, “How does a garden teach? What is the role of environment and community in teacher education? How does learning to teach in the natural world influence how a student approaches the role of ‘teacher’?” (p. 1), led Gaylie to the realization that teaching and learning in a garden can transform learners to become more ecologically aware. In addition, gardens can also radically transform our understanding of education and move us away from “an industrial, transmission model that emphasizes learning ‘products’” (p. 3) to eco-centred, community-based education and curriculum. Three central metaphors lie at the
heart of The Learning Garden and provide its content and structure: garden as environment, garden as community, and garden as transformation. While the three main chapters overlap somewhat in their exploration of the three metaphors, different student cohorts’ experiences and voices play a central role in carrying these garden stories. Moreover, Gaylie’s own voice and reflections form an integral part of the narratives. Far from presenting herself as an expert, she models—through her teaching, poetry, and journal reflections—her own learning and unlearning inspired by the garden and her students. Woven within these chapters are also indigenous teachings, particularly from local Okanagan learning traditions. The Learning Garden concludes with
two additional chapters: practical matters and a photo essay. Since gardens should ideally be discovered experientially, and their uniqueness cannot entirely be captured by the written word, the photo essay provides added richness to Gaylie’s exploration of garden-based learning. The practical matters chapter, which contains a list of activities and Internet resources that act as starting points for teaching and learning in gardens, seems out of place. These activities and resources may have been included to appease lesson-plan oriented teachers, but they contradict Gaylie’s central message to learn from the garden, from place, and from community. While these activities may be useful food for thought for busy educators with little
www.clearingmagazine.org/online
background experience in gardens, I question their appropriateness for this particular book. Overall, however, The Learning
Garden goes beyond a “how-to” guide to teacher education in school gardens and provides examples of powerful principles
Gaylie and her students developed
while working in the garden. The principles of rotating stewardship and its related concept of the garden as a gift are two that move learners from a standardized, commodified relationship with the land and learning to one based on community, democracy, and sustainability. As Gaylie frequently makes clear, it is important to develop new metaphors and narratives for ecology-centred curriculum. For instance, through rotating stewardship, the students recognize that they do not own the land and that assessment and evalua- tion are meaningful only when based on principles of ecological design. Moreover, students discover the parallels between rotating stewardship, gardens, and their future roles as teachers: “Part of the wonder of the garden was that, in the end, it was not their own. It was a gift” (p. 66). The Learning Garden is a philosophical,
historical, practical, and beautiful ex- ploration of school gardens and education. While the book suffers from some repetition and an over-reliance on two sources (the excellent Ecological Literacy: Educating our Children for a Sustainable Future and Ecological Education in Action: On Weaving Education, Culture and the Environment), its approach to teaching and learning in school gardens is unique, thoughtful, and thought-provoking. Through- out the book, Gaylie roots her narratives and theoretical explorations in the very practical ground of the garden: The Learning Garden exposed the new
teachers to a concept of the land as both a physical space and an experiential learning process, concepts involving responsible land management, ecological justice, risk taking, community commitment and, ulti- mately, transformation. But the garden was also a garden. After we pulled weeds, they always returned. (pp. 2-3) [italics added] Considering conventional stylistic
traditions in academic writing and the lack of ecological literacy amongst many urban intellectuals and teachers, to talk about weeding and manure in The Learning Garden is quite radical, and I applaud Gaylie for initiating conversations about teaching and learning in school gardens grounded in
CLEARING 2011
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