A Look Inside Garden Education - Teaching Science Through Exploration
This blog post was written by Garden Educator Sydney Spicer, who leads garden lessons at the Martin Luther King School in Cambridge, the Henderson Inclusion Upper School in Dorchester, and the Russell School in Dorchester. She also leads middle-school aged youth through our after school Dorchester Youth Leadership Team club at Oasis on Ballou and through our Young Leaders Program in the summer.
“Gardener Sydney, what is this?”
It’s a question I often get from students at all of my schools, whether they are holding up a tomatillo or a cucumber they found. Students bring out their curiosity in full force at our CitySprouts gardens, and they are often using it to look for one thing: answers. However, in the garden, answers are the one thing I usually try not to give my students.
“Rather than giving our students only answers, at CitySprouts we give students the tools to find them.”
That may seem a bit counterintuitive. We are a garden-based science organization working in schools, and from the outside, it may seem as though we should be teaching answers, but CitySprouts works differently. Rather than giving our students only answers, at CitySprouts we give students the tools to find them.
Garden Educator Sydney with a group of youth from the Russell Young Leaders Program site (Summer 2021). The youth took a field trip to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston to visit the Garden for Boston exhibit.
“The look on their faces when I told them that they were scientists, too, was a look of pure awe.”
This fall, as I started my second school-year of teaching with CitySprouts, I was met with an incredible experience. On my first fall day teaching in the garden, I was working with a class of second graders, and I introduced myself. I said, “Hi all, my name is Gardener Sydney, and I am a scientist.” I was met with a gasp that was audible and incredible. These second graders were starry eyed and amazed that me, a scientist, was standing in front of them. However, that wasn’t the best part. The look on their faces when I told them that they were scientists, too, was a look of pure awe.
That day in the garden, we explored using the tools any scientist uses - our senses. We felt plants to classify them by texture, we looked for different colors in the garden, and smelled herbs to try and determine what their scents were. Our class of seven-year olds was doing science outside and feeling like scientists in only their second week of school.
“I see CitySprouts doing what it was founded to do - getting students excited to use their tools to inquire about the world, to explore, and to learn together.”
When we came back together, we thought of one more science tool that we all have - our brains. With these tools, we thought together on questions we had about the garden. However, now, these questions went beyond, “Gardener Sydney, what is this?” They asked,
“Why are the flowers in the garden red?” and hypothesized that bees might like that color better. They wondered, “Why are some plants soft and others are prickly?” and we thought together. And most importantly, they all asked, “What are we going to do in the garden next week?”
It may sound like flowers and rainbows, but well, that’s because it is. In bringing young people outdoors to do hands-on, inquiry-based science, we are giving them the tools to express their curiosity and to see themselves as the scientists they are. The one thing that all of my students have in common, no matter if they are pre-Kindergarten or 5th graders, is not only that they can do science, but that they are already doing science. As I tell my classes, if you’re asking questions, you’re doing science.
Garden Educator Sydney with one of her youth at her after school Youth Leadership Team club at Oasis on Ballou in Dorchester (September 2021).
The further we go into the year and the more I get to work with these students in the garden, the more I see them using their tools to think beyond just getting an answer. From our free exploration time in the outdoor gardens to our hands-on, curriculum-based experiments, I see CitySprouts doing what it was founded to do - getting students excited to use their tools to inquire about the world, to explore, and to learn together.
So while I still hear, “Gardener Sydney, what is this?” from time to time, I don’t mind. I know that while my students want answers from the world, during our classes in the garden, they’re getting the tools to look for them.