by 9-12 Teachers Joanna Breger, Shelley Robyn & Melissa Sugzdinis    

Throughout the year, the 9-12 students have been answering the question "What is Culture?"    

One of our readings introduced the idea of a community garden where people from many different cultures turned a city lot into a multicultural vegetable garden that satisfied a diversity of needs. In addition, our science work this year addressed topics about plants as the foundation of life, the flow of energy and matter, and how nature's biological system and our human-designed agricultural system work together to supply us with food. 

Students had many opportunities to combine their current thinking with what they were learning to develop new knowledge constructs. Students were challenged to collect thorough, accurate data and to carefully interpret this data, along with writing assignments to reflect on what they learned while expanding their thinking.

A unit on agriculture took students from the natural world to the human-designed system for producing the plants and animals we eat. The unit led students through investigations of the ways in which humans depend on farmers for our food. Students then tried their hands at being farmers. They measured, planned and researched various processes before building two raised beds for their garden. Square Foot Gardening allowed each student to choose a space based on which cold weather vegetable they wanted to plant and care for. The beds are now full with kale, lettuce, spinach, arugula, radishes and marigolds. 

We can't wait to taste our harvest before leaving school in June. Vegetables that continue to grow through June will be donated to the Food Bank of Delaware where we will be volunteering one morning this month. We will also be taking several other off-site trips this month. These trips include visits to the University of Delaware's Cooperative Extension Demonstration Garden, which will highlight the use of native plants to attract beneficial insects and birds; UD's College of Agriculture & Natural Resources, where we hope to learn more about native plants and other ways that we can enrich our environment; and the Delaware Agricultural Museum in Dover, where we will learn how agriculture affected Delaware history and how agricultural technology has changed over time.