Join us in conversation with Hedi Baxter Lauffer. We catch up and learn how plants, science education and having teachers think of themselves as learners all play a part in Hedi’s professional background. You don’t want to miss a chance to hear from the Director of Teaching and Learning with the Wisconsin Fast Plants Program.
Links:
FastPlants.org
BSCS Science Curriculum
Wisconsin Fast Plants Link
SIMPL Model
Ambitious Science Primer
1:1 Techology, 1:1 Plants
Music: RomanBelov from Pixabay
Find us on social media:
Instagram: cmichcese
Facebook: cmich_cese
Join us in conversation with Hedi Baxter Lauffer. We catch up and learn how plants, science education and having teachers think of themselves as learners all play a part in Hedi’s professional background. You don’t want to miss a chance to hear from the Director of Teaching and Learning with the Wisconsin Fast Plants Program.
Links:
FastPlants.org
BSCS Science Curriculum
Wisconsin Fast Plants Link
SIMPL Model
Ambitious Science Primer
1:1 Techology, 1:1 Plants
Music: RomanBelov from Pixabay
Find us on social media:
Instagram: cmichcese
Facebook: cmich_cese
Okay, now we're recording so welcome to teach wonder. Wonder podcast hosted by
Ashley O'Neil:Ashley O'Neill and Julie Cunningham. I fell in love with gardening and plants by teaching my students about plants. You know, for most of my adult life I took for granted where food came from. Even though I had examples in my childhood, my grandfather had a tidy garden in the summer basement shelves lined with home canned goods in the winter. 99% of my memories of my grandma are of her watering your pruning flowers. But it wasn't until I watched my first graders discover the lifecycle of a plant, their faces pressed against the glass checking for cotyledons, peeking out of paper towels and baggies taped to the window. That helped me connect the science to the beauty and helped me bring out the content from the classroom and put it into my life. So now I exchange seedlings and cuttings like friendship bread, I pull my own cans from shelves and plan garden layouts over text with my cousin every spring. So this episode was a special delight for me. It's a mix of all those things, a mix of science and plant conversations, pedagogy and experiences. We met with Hedi Baxter Laufer, Julie met her working on fast plants a few years ago, and I met her just before we hit record in this episode. Her CV is impressive researcher, PhD former science teacher farmer, and you'll hear about her research and time in the classroom. She shares great experiences and advice in this interview. What struck me though in our conversation was the way in which it held an appreciation and respect for nature, and expressed so clearly how that is deepened and intensified by understanding the science that makes that beauty possible. Headies respect for teachers and students is also clear as she shares the importance of giving students these experiences. So whether you have this spark for having nature, in your classroom or in your life, or you've yet to discover how it fits, I recommend listening to this interview to hear heady stories, explanations and advice. I didn't understand how important plants were in my classroom until I was teaching and my students helped me see. And they learned so much from our conversation that you're about to hear. I hope you do too. Quick heads up. We had some technical issues with our recording. It's not enough to impact understanding. But it's just enough to remind you that we recorded this interview over zoom.
Julie Cunningham:All right, so I'll start us out. So I've known Headey, I know a lot of years now I feel like and I've, every single time I am lucky enough to work with Hetty on a project, I learned something new, and I come out a better educator and a better person because of it. So we are very lucky to have her on our podcast today. And how do you I'll let you introduce yourself and tell us what you want us to know about yourself and your teaching and your research interests, please.
Hedi:Oh, thank you. And I would first say thank you for having me on. And if the reverse is true, I also learn as much from you as you say you learn from me every time we get together. And we've done some really interesting work all kinds of different work together over the years and and that's the good fortune of my position is that I have had a lot of opportunities to be both a teacher and a learner and a lot of different situations. I started out my career into teaching because I really had found school boring and and insignificant as a kid. And I actually dropped out of high school because it was so boring and felt like I was just jumping through hoops. And it wasn't until I was an adult and had my own kids that I started really thinking about rather than trying to change schools from the outside going on the inside and becoming a teacher. And from at that point, I had been practicing science as a farmer for a long time. So I would say who I am probably at the base at the heart of my heart of hearts is the farmer and in particular, I love plants. But I also love teaching and learning and I went back to school to become a middle certified in for middle and high school science and taught at a high school in Wisconsin for a while and had the good opportunities while I was there to teach with VSTS material. They're a nonprofit organization that does science curriculum was quite innovative. And at one point I got invited to be ESC s to be on a focus group to revise some materials that they had developed. And at the end of the focus group, I got offered a job to direct the revision of those materials. So that's what kind of pulled me out of the classroom. And I did do that curriculum work. And I learned a lot. Mental one thing I learned was that I really like to teach and I really miss teaching. So I moved from curriculum development at BSCS, into professional development. And from there, I went to the University of Pittsburgh and worked with the learning research and development team, they're with some really brilliant educators, and ended up coming full circle back to the University of Wisconsin Madison, where I've got my undergraduate master's degrees, and went into a Ph. D. program. And my research interests are really about teaching and learning and, and how we support learning effectively. And, in particular, I'm really interested in how teachers learn, and how, as teachers we learn and then bring stuff back into our classrooms and teach our children or youth or, you know, whatever, adults, whatever age learners we have.
Julie Cunningham:I have follow up questions, actually. But of course I do. So is there something you want to ask at first?
Ashley O'Neil:No, I got a little bit like caught up and excited in your story in the fact that you're a farmer. So I'm just, I'm just gonna like, take it in and listen for a little longer, because I don't know you as well. So I'm still like, just getting really excited that we're chatting today. So go ahead, Julie.
Julie Cunningham:Okay. Hey, I was wondering if you would talk, you talk about being an educator and often enjoying working with teachers and working with teachers as learners. And you have done some really interesting work in that space. So I think when I was a graduate student, you and Dan came into a seminar class. And that was the first time I ever thought about wearing a teacher hat and a learner hat. And, and and I don't know, if you still do things that way, or not over at some other iteration of that. But the idea that we weren't allowed to ask Teacher like questions when we were being student learners, right, and we weren't allowed to be, I guess it could be student learners when you were being a teacher, but that vice versa, right? Like, take off your teacher hat for a minute. And don't think of this from your teacher standpoint, but just enjoy being a learner. So I don't want to talk about any of that, or otherwise, you've done a lot of work. And this is my summary. Of course, I know, You've done a lot of work with fast plants and modeling, but the idea of modeling, where does the carbon go? And where does the the carbon sink or, you know, I guess I'm not seeing it very articulately right now, but I think you know, what I mean,
Hedi:through grants and projects that I've had the benefit of getting to work on a number of them have involved working in collaborative groups, with scientists, and teachers, and those who teach teachers. And in doing that work, what we really came to realize was that we needed to, to afford people who are learning, whether they're teachers or or, you know, just students an opportunity to learn the content that you're teaching. From the perspective of figuring things out, and being completely engrossed in that learning experience, before you step back and start thinking about how you would facilitate that yourself as a teacher of others. And so, we, my husband and I have done a lot of this work together and we kind of lived ate and breathed it for a while, they had a large project that was all over the nation and, and we ended up refining a model that is called the simple model for how to do how to facilitate and design teacher professional learning opportunities so that teachers are given space, both two variants, some kind of new lessons that you're, you're hoping to expose them to and get a you know, give them opportunities to learn about, that they learn those from a teacher's perspective and also them from the perspective of how would I facilitate this? And I think that's just part of really respecting teachers and the profession of teaching, that, that we need to acknowledge that there are special skills, pedagogical skills that you employ when you're teaching others. And those are different skills that you also have to learn and and perfect, and they're separate from and different than the knowledge that you would learn just as a student learning are where you're learning content and disciplinary content and skills to do a thing. It's different to teach someone else. And we have a lot of respect for teachers. And so we try and make sure that that comes through clearly when we're doing professional development, because we're all learning all the time. That's the cool thing about teaching and education. The other work that I that you mentioned that, that I've done quite a lot of, and you and I did a fair amount of, is using fast plan, Wisconsin fast plan. Should I do a little bit of a check? Yes, it was.
Julie Cunningham:Yes, I think they're either like really known for their either like somebody really knows them. And will will want to hear what you have to say about them. And or it's unique to someone and they want to hear about them.
Hedi:Let's see. So I came to work with Wisconsin Fast Plants. Actually, from a teaching perspective, when I was teaching high school, one of the other teachers in our department was teaching with bass plants. And eventually our entire science department was teaching with best plants. And I, like I said, I'm a farmer at heart and love plants. So I was really excited to have this organism to get to teach with, and I was going to school. The so this was even when I was doing my student teaching. While I was still at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, I had the good fortune of getting to work with Dr. Paul Williams, who is the founder of fast plants and his wife and some other folks to learn about using fast plants to teach the lifecycle of plants and also for experimentation, to understand what plants need and how environment, and genetics all interact with, you know, what you get as a plant. So I was excited about bringing them into my classroom from that perspective. And then as a teacher, what blew me away was how wrapped up in those plants might students who came, they took such ownership over those plants, and some students who I really had struggled to reach and be you know, you're as a teacher, you're always trying to make the materials that you're, you know, whatever it is the concepts that you want students to learn, you're trying to make that relevant. And you're going at it from this direction in that direction of trying to find what is it that is most relevant about this concept to these, this particular student. And it just seemed like when I was brought in the fast plants, when we started growing plants, it was relevant to everyone, everybody was just excited to see the change and come they come into class. And before they'd ever sit down to get started, or before the bell would ring, they'd be looking at their plants to see what was going on. So it became really apparent to me how valuable that interaction with their plants was. And so it was a really easy transition. When I started using fast plants in the curriculum I was developing and in professional development that I was doing was really an easy way to also get teachers involved in thinking about something that were genuine learning experiences for them also. And then I had the opportunity to join the fast planets program at UW Madison after going back and get my PhD and I've been with the program now for over 15 years. Yeah,
Ashley O'Neil:okay, so I've done I've done flat fast plants. And then when I was a classroom teacher I did I think we did lima beans and green beans and cabbage and tomatoes like we we did not fast plants just to put a category so fast plants are not fast plants. If you had a teacher who was kind of asking what the advantages are the different perspective that students would get doing fast Plants versus picking up seeds from the local nursery. What What might you how might you frame that for them?
Hedi:So that is the question of how fast plants are particularly useful in teaching and learning as compared to the radish seeds that you can get at the hardware store or some of their seeds. That's a really good question. And the difference is that fast plants were bred specifically to be a model organism that complete the entire life cycle. And it's a very unique plant. And so it's kind of like a lab rat. And it came out of the work that Paul Williams was doing trying to come up with a way to research disease resistance and cabbage and in a very short amount of time. and be able to do that in a laboratory situation, which is not unlike a classroom situation. But in order to find interesting traits, you need to have a large population. So those things that were bred for for research make them really good for teaching. One being that you can have a very large population in a small space, in your classroom under just classroom growing conditions, that's useful both because a lot of us have a lot of students. And we would like every student to have a plan that they're tracking as it grows. So being able to have a really large population, facilitate that. But also, if we're going to do anything where we're looking at data, we need to have a large enough sample size, that we can actually interpret some some of our results with some accuracy. And so that ability to grow in a very small soil volume in the classroom, and under artificial light, is really useful. The other thing is that those radish seeds or any other seeds that you might get for the garden, those have been bred to produce some kind of vegetative structure that we want to eat typically, or else the flower that we want, you know, see, but not for speed. And fast plants, bolts through their life cycle without producing very much vegetative material they're not, they're not really good for eating, you know, because they basically just shoot up all them a few leaves, and boom, we got a flower. So in just two weeks, under ideal conditions, were pollinating. And now we're talking about the interactions between the insects that are, you know, in the environment and, and the flowers, and then we're watching those flowers actually turn into seed pots. And that's just a, that's a concept that you don't really get from even being in your garden very often. And that you really need to understand if you're going to understand the whole lifecycle. And another really big advantage with fat plants is that they are not, they typically do not self pollinate. So if you want to teach concepts of reproduction, sexual reproduction, with a flowering plant, your you can actually talk about ways the reproduction and fast plant are similar to human and animal, because they're not self pollinating, which is really confusing when you know, to students who are just trying to get their heads wrapped around sexual reproduction at all. And you can do some very cool genetics firsthand data collection of genetic investigations with bathmats. Because again, you have to take collect the pollen from this plant, and go find another plant and pollinate in order to be able to produce your offspring. So if you are looking for inheritance pattern, they're not complex and convoluted by self pollination. So there's just a really a lot of interesting things that you can teach in a manner where students get to gather firsthand evidence from their plants in a short amount of time.
Ashley O'Neil:That's great, that's really helpful. I should, I completely agree with all of those, those wonderful pieces that you were sharing. I will also say that from the work we have done with classrooms, one thing that teachers have commented on is that expect minor adjustments to care plans result in macro observable differences in plants. So students who opt to have one less hour of daylight on their planet can see how differently their plant is growing within days. So and that quick gratification allows them to do some experiments. And with the smaller window of their attention span, or their ability to kind of remember what they they wanted to do and see the effects of it is nice and tidy and quick, so that they can really see even at the younger grades, what those plants need and how changing that just a little bit really does affect the plant's growth.
Hedi:That's an important point. Yes, absolutely. I agree with you that all of those abilities to have whether it's a teacher guided inquiry or a student centered inquiry where they're choosing the variables, fast plants do respond really quickly to any kind of change in their environment. And so they are a great measure of environmental impact. Their actual and, and that's the same thing in in genuine research scientific research to they're used often as the model organism because they have that ability to be used as a model. organism to do initial testing and then you might go on then and look at it, you know, out in the field or whatever. There's lots of research published about plant growth, development and interactions with environments that started with houseplants or brassica. Rappa.
Ashley O'Neil:Alright, right, Julie, I got lost in the weeds. I took this on a detour. Sorry, no. No,
Hedi:it was kind of, I think it was kind of a cool way to get at what our fast plants instead of the usual, you know, I'll have fun bye, blah, blah, blah, blah, I think you did a good job.
Julie Cunningham:You did do a good job. Perfect. Perfect.
Ashley O'Neil:is good for me. Like,
Julie Cunningham:if if we go back to how he tried to go back to our questions, sort of at least, there was a question in there that asked about your wide range of experience in education and how that has how your experiences and you've already alluded to the fact that you've had a lot of different opportunities, and what you've said, are a lot of great opportunities. What have there been some highlights? And then how have those unless this is redundant to something you've already addressed? How have those helped you to change your thinking over time? No,
Hedi:I think I actually, I think that that's the question of how my thinking about teaching and learning has changed over time is valid. I mean, we hopefully are always growing and changing. And I, you know, can look back at what I did in the classroom many years ago, compared to you know, where I'm at now. And, and I would say it's changed not because of a diff, not so much because of not being in the classroom and being on the dark side, or something like that. It's really more that I've continued to grow. My own conception, I think of what's important. And I think the biggest change for me, was a deeper appreciation for how important that is for us to give students an opportunity to figure things out. I always felt that, but I think the depth of that is now wrapped around a lot more rigor, and a lot more commitment to interpretation and explanation. I think, for a long time, I was pretty happy with students being really, really curious and engaged in trying to grapple with their results and come up with some evidence. But I did not press for, and I didn't press myself, even for making sure that the materials that I was designing and giving my students that they had to have all the information needed for the for students to be able to develop a robust explanation, that really fully, you know, merited what the learning goal was that I was shooting for. And it's just taken time, I think, for me to really come to appreciate and understand how how, you know, sophisticated, it really is, for a professional teacher to design a good solid learning experience where everything is there, for students to be able to get the evidence they need to come up with that really rigorous explanation. Not because I taught, you know, not because I said it, but because they figured it out. And that has that, I would say where my commitments and perspectives have deepened.
Julie Cunningham:And we don't a lot of things that we do in education don't necessarily support teachers. Well, in doing that a lot of structures we put into education, for at no fault for teachers, right, a lot of institutional structures don't necessarily support teachers doing that and doing it well. So I think sometimes teachers have to do that in spite of their constraints in in public education, but if you it sounds to me a lot like and maybe this is putting it into nice and neat. Tidy a category, I don't know. But like if I had to define that, I'd say that comes down to at least some type of project based or problem based instruction. So can you talk a little bit about what that looks like for you or what that looks like with fast plants?
Hedi:Mm hmm. Yeah. So I think I think that it does come down to structuring some investigations or projects, you know, that were students. And I don't mean to limit that to that it always Hands On investigation, it might be a research based project. But I think the best quality of learning that deep learning that we're looking for for students come when the when they're figuring out the solution to some, or the answer to some compelling questions, and having a dig through and figure out, you know, what is relevant evidence and what is irrelevant evidence. And so in the case of fast plants, what we're able to do is provide an anchor of living organism, that students can really observe changes and record and, you know, engage in those practices of fire them to, to be able to get firsthand evidence, and then to really be able to develop a robust explanation, there's likely to be additional research and information that would be gathered from other sources, including maybe the teacher and you know, maybe the books that are in the classroom or whatever. But having that common shared experience of a project, in our in the case of what we typically do, the project is growing fast plants with, you know, either in a controlled experiment, or are just in a situation where we're observing how they grow and develop. that shared experience among a group of students is very powerful, because now we can talk about the shared experience, and derive from that, the concepts that we're trying to learn, you know, in science, and that's accessible, whether English is your first language or not, you know, there's a lot of things about having that shared experience with a project or a growing plant that really reaches a broader audience of students than if we're just focusing always on reading and writing, you know, the typical academic skills
Ashley O'Neil:when you talk about having this shared experience, and then if we back up and think about how you were talking about, pairing that with rigor and having a really good explanation, by the end, or students had that deep understanding, I thought two things I thought, I think that sometimes teachers get afraid. And then speaking me, teacher also, I'll put myself in that category where I get so excited that my students are engaged, and they're asking these great questions. And they're seeming really motivated. And I don't know what my next step is, right? So they bought it and they're super excited about these plants. There are a lot of different conceptions floating around the room, different prior knowledge is or understandings that they bring some home stories that Grandpa has told them about what a plant does and how it grows, that may or may not fit into the explanation that we're working toward. How do you partner, that excitement and approach you know, you get this information? And you say, okay, the students are, are kind of over here, and we need to move in this direction? Do you immediately think I need to talk to them, I need to ask more questions of them? Or do you look for experiences that let them kind of wrestle and tussle with that content in a different way?
Hedi:Great question. Yes. To all of that. I think that the some of the tools that we have as professionals that can help us think about how to approach next steps, when we're when we're the ones orchestrating an inquiry, or an investigation, project based experience for learners. Those tools are really becoming more and more robust. For example, the ambitious science teacher teaching project has a really nice set of materials and in the discourse analysis, or that's not discourse analysis, what's the name of that resources?
Julie Cunningham:I'll make sure I'll make sure we get it right, because I know what you're talking about, too, but I can't think of it.
Hedi:It's like a discourse primer that where the the folks who have been involved in the in that ambitious science teaching project, have done a really good job of helping us think through as we're writing our lesson, what stage of the learning process, am I going to be with my students today? Or, and then the next day and then the next day? Because initially, when I'm just trying to really activate prior knowledge, and get that excitement and buy in, I want all that input from students that were there how How it relates and how relevant it might be to the learning goals that I have in mind is irrelevant, actually, to the, to the learning process. At that point, at that point, we want to just collect all those things that are running through your head and get them on the table. And then from that, I'm going to try and say, well, out of all these things, you know, can I kind of highlight it a few that are aligned with what it is that I is the direction that I want to take this inquiry, and then you're gonna refine, and you're gonna change your questions. And sort of like the difference between is very much the difference between collecting ideas when you're having a brainstorming session versus pressing for understanding when you're a little farther down the road. So in, you know, lessons where students have already engaged their prior knowledge. Now, I'm going to press to see if the evidence that they see in their plants that are growing and the results of their experiments, supports some of the misconceptions that I heard floating around. So I think that's part of what we do, as teachers in planning is we set ourselves up for an intentional kind of discourse in the classroom, depending on where we are in the in the learning progression, you know, so you might call it an instructional model. And there's lots of the but I think, as long as you're, if you're doing a little bit of a flip flop, let me back up just a little bit. I think a lot of us learned science, in the paradigm that the teacher tells you what you need to know. And then if you're fortunate origin and in quotes, you get to go do a lab then to confirm that what the teacher told you is correct. And that's a you know, that's how I learned science. That was what, what compelled me to feel like it was just playing a game and was stupid, it didn't feel genuine to me. But if we can set things up with a flip flop on that, where students are first wondering about something and compelled to one to figure something out, and then the lab experience is about gathering data and trying to figure it out. That's very, very different. And so I think when we're designing our instruction, we just have to be intentional about where we are in that progress in that process of figuring things out.
Ashley O'Neil:And that's great, because it also gives the teacher some space to work inside of I know, when I was shifting some of my teaching to be a little bit more inquiry and project based and relearning the the years of schooling that I had, where I just would tell the students, my initial reaction would be to go, Oh, they're not getting it, I should now tell them the answer. They had their time to play. And I should tell them now, but you're saying kind of gives the teacher strategy to say, let those things come out and use that to inform your own next moves. And it's okay to come back the next day to say, hey, we heard some of these things, as a group, I want to come back to this and look at this in a different way, or show you this and get your thoughts on on that. And it gives the teacher some time to consider those things rather than to do their first response, which may be to either tell them the answer or tell them no, even if that's not what they're they're wanting to try to.
Hedi:And also gives you time to, to figure things out yourself, you know, and then model that. And I think it's really important for us to show, you know, sometimes we don't know, and we are curious and have to go away and think about stuff and figure it out. And then fact I think that becomes really important with plants sometimes because using plants in the classroom can sometimes be a quite foreign situation for a lot of teachers who are not gardeners that maybe never had a health plant or they had one and it died. And so now they're you know, they're faced with bath plants, and maybe, okay, so I bought in that, yes, students should learn with plants and understand how important plants are on earth. And so I'm going to try these plants. It's really important to approach that process of teaching with plants from the perspective of being shared, having a shared learning experience with your students. And that together, you're going to think about how those plants grow and develop from a scientific perspective. So just as I don't want my students to just follow a recipe and do it procedural approach to their learning, I don't want to as a teacher model that I just do a procedural step by step planting of the plants and expecting them to perform a certain way. It's not like that they're a living thing. And really, we can all have students and teachers, plant our plants, and watch them grow. And think about it the entire time, from the perspective of matter and energy. And think about so we just, we've got the seeds, and we're going to put them in this hello in the soil and add water, whatever, where's the energy that is going to be involved for those seeds to turn into a seedling? And where are the matter that's going to have to be there, you know, all of that you can interpret and troubleshoot and all that kind of thing from the perspective of matter and energy. And then it doesn't matter if things go wonky. You can you can still learn from wonky as long as you're willing to dig in and try and interpret it. You know, scientifically, what, why not? Why did it go on? That's a great question. I love it. Um,
Ashley O'Neil:I am going to have a really hard time sticking to our timeframe here, because I'm really enjoying chatting with you. I'm looking at our questions. And there's two topics that I know, Julie mentioned, that I want to hear more from you about. And one of those is, I know, you're really passionate about helping students understand stewardship of the earth and being good stewards. And you brought that up again, in just a minute ago. Can you talk a little bit about more about the why and the how of that for you?
Hedi:I think that as science teachers, we are in a unique position where understanding ecology and interactions on Earth is part of our curriculum, we often leave it to the end of the year, because it's not in a neat little box. It's more complex. And yet, it is the thing that we walk through, in live in, in so it's a great place to start when we're trying to think about how to be relevant. And there is no doubt that these students we're working with now are going to have some really big challenges to figure out. And so I think it is critical that we give them fundamental understanding of interactions and responsibilities that we have to all living things on Earth. And at the base of all of that, is plants, you know, the plants are, are critical to all of this carbon sequestration, and cycling of matter, and the support of micro biomes, and all of that kind of thing. And we can we can start there, we can start, instead of starting at the cellular level, we can start macro, and help students really engage them in something that feels real and relevant and not like busy work. And then we can unpack from there. And there's a, you know, we can develop that need to know more by beginning with what's relevant and and specifically tuned to to the place where you're teaching, but then also tied to a global perspective. And, yeah, we need, we need stewards, and we need really good thinkers who can figure things out. And as science teachers, I think it's both a gift and a responsibility to make sure that that's what we're doing in our classes.
Julie Cunningham:How do you Was there anything else that you wanted to talk about today that we didn't specifically ask you? Regarding education and or plants and or professional learning?
Hedi:I guess regarding plants, I would just say this wonderful article that I just read did, Schell I can't pick everything. Anyway, she did a really nice job of saying that. Right now, our focus tends to be on technology. And certainly it's in the foreground because of all that we've gone through in the last couple of years of needing to have remote learning and all of that kind of thing. And so there's a huge pressure to have, you know, every student to have access that which I'm not saying that they should they should you need access to the technology and certainly part of what our future depends on the technology expertise. At the same time, our future depends on us being able to Be respectful and, and navigate the challenges that lay lie ahead when it comes to figuring out how to make sure we have water allocated in a way that's fair and, and. And as high quality, you know, unhealthy air that is, you know, we're not lowering our standards for the quality of the air, and that we understand that when we do compromise those things, those basic that it affects plants, and when we affect plants, we affect everything. And, and that nurturing and give and take understanding of what it takes to, to interact with living organisms is not something that students necessarily get a lot of practice with. And so by having plants in the classroom, if every student has a plant that they're raising, and taking care of, and nurturing, there are more lessons than just what the plant on the blog, water, light, all of that kind of thing. There's a really fundamental, basic lesson about our interaction with plants. That can be rekindled, because, you know, we co evolved with plants. And when you grow a plant, we like to say grow a plant to know a plant. And it's, you know, it's catchy phrase, but it's real, you really do develop a different kind of understanding by growing a plant. And so I really would like to advocate for students having an opportunity to do that. School gardens are wonderful, really hard when you live in a place where school happens during the cold. So bring some plants inside, you know, and have them grow them and if you can take them through the whole lifecycle. It's just amazing how many students have no clue what comes from a seed and awareness seed comes from.
Ashley O'Neil:This has been another episode of teach wonder brought to you by the Center for Excellence in STEM education. We're so grateful to have you listening to us today. You can find a complete list of all the things mentioned in this episode and our show notes. Transcripts are also available. If you've listened and learned something from our conversation today. Please feel free to share this episode with a friend or colleague to connect with us. You can find us online at sea mesh.edu/dem Ed, that's CMI ch.edu/s T E m E D