alternative learning environments: the garden

alternative learning environments: the garden

The Hollenback Community Garden, Brooklyn, New York

We believe gardens offer important characteristics worthy of consideration for teaching: they are outdoors (and very hard to fall asleep in), they are rich in visual, tactile, olefactory and kinethetic opportunities, and they require attention.  There is no passivity in taking responsibility for a garden.  Teaching outdoors is nothing particularly new, but we know it is rarely employed, rarely fully supported by teaching tools (outdoor smart boards anyone?), and rarely manageable: how do teachers take responsibility for, set-up and utilize such a space?  Yet, we have never forgotten the following image, of a classroom we encountered in Agadez, Niger in 2007 on a  trip across the Sahara Desert:

Outdoor Classroom, Agadez, Niger 2007

What surprised us, given the lack of resources, was the engagement of the students with the teachers and with each other, the utter lack of drowsiness, and the critique of our own preconceptions, after years of designing both public and private schools, of what teaching and learning required.  A board, some shade, some tablets...

A garden begins to offer some of the primal emotive qualities the traditional neutral classroom lacks.  It also offers a curriculum (botany, biology, general science, culinary arts), a lesson in responsibility and discipline, and the possibility of a kinethetic experience that might appeal to many students disenfranchised by gym and by sports.  For schools seeking additional income streams, it also offers a public venue that will ennoble any number of private rituals, from bar mitzvahs to weddings.  Here is one example of a teaching garden: