With every passing day in this university, I feel so
blessed to be part of this program and to have a lifelong learning experience. Today
our inquiry class was in UBC orchard garden. It was very relaxing and gave us an
academic break to enjoy the beauty around, which we usually do not realize
since we are all busy with our own lives. I found that there are tremendous
ways in which gardens can teach us and we as teachers can inculcate gardens in our
pedagogies and work around the curriculum to make the students feel more
connected to nature. The research scholar Diana guided us in the orchard garden
and I fascinated to see the sunflowers all wrapped up, maybe for some research
purposes and the wild sunflowers were being pollinated manually to interbreed
the two species. There was wide range
of organic fruits and vegetables grown in the garden (Asian pears, cherry
tomatoes, broccoli, different herbs like basil, mint) which can not only be used
for eating purposes but also making inquiries and learning. We all enjoyed
eating fresh organic fruits and vegetables together. I feel that the taste
of anything increases many folds if we share and eat together.
One thing I noticed in all of us was that everybody
inquired about the thing they were unaware of and made predictions. This is an
important exercise for us to follow and then pass on to our students. There
were few trees that I was unsure of what they were but still tried to inquire
them by sensing and tasting.
The sound activity introduced by the Ph.D. Scholar who
is researching how does sound of the nature impacts the children’s learning.
She asked us to close our eyes and experience different sounds in nature.
The activity of drawing images of sound was very new. I was wondering how can
we shape a certain sound but this activity opened the path to my
imagination and limitless sky. We also played the orchestra of all kinds of
sound heard by the group mates. It was really fun and we all were so engaged in
it. This further strengthens the power of working together, sharing views with
each other makes us more emotionally happy and gives us a sense of happiness
and brotherhood. I will definitely incorporate such activities in my classroom
to build better relationships amongst the students.
I look forward
to our next Thursdays class in orchard garden to learn more from nature and
from each other.
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