Joan:
As I look at our classroom garden in which the flowers themselves increasingly play the role of gardeners, cultivating themselves and one another, I step back to think about what we have cultivated.
- Our garden has grown mutual respect, interdependence, and affection, largely through cycles of working in groups, representing developing ideas in visible and audible ways, further developing these ideas in consultation with others' thinking, and reflecting on the processes of learning and learning together. As a result, our students have developed a genuine appreciation of the "learning power" and social/emotional rewards of a real learning group
- From a Teaching for Understanding point of view, our garden has begun to grow the understandings that Jen?s understanding goals established as important outcomes of this "required" ninth grade unit.
- Our garden has also grown an optimistic orientation toward the future: the flowers are leaving Jen's classroom with new skills and knowledge, confidence in applicability of these new skills and knowledge to new learning situations, a shared memory of learning together, and the resolve to use their awareness of their successes and "mistakes" to commit to more learning and more academic success. So many formalized educational ideas come to mind as I look at this collection of learning outcomes. Our garden has supported the development of "better" habits of heart, mind, and work (ATLAS Schools, First Amendment Schools) and of the thinking dispositions of ability, alertness, and inclination (Ritchhart and others).
As I strive to analyze the design and growth patterns and the processes underlying our garden's success and attempt to understand how next year's garden might be as healthy or even more robust, I appreciate how many of the practices central to Teaching for Understanding and Making Learning Visible that surface student thinking, learning, and reflective insights are highly compatible - and absolutely essential to one another if a classroom is to become a garden where students flower as learners and human beings.