A student post from The Workshop 12*
Spotted: crabgrass tucked beneath strawberry leaves. Shovel in hand, I dug deeper and deeper until its seemingly unrelenting roots slowly surfaced from the dirt.
After tossing weed number one-hundred-and-something into the bucket, I stepped back to observe the entire garden from a distance.
Just a few hours ago, we found the garden as a hodgepodge of unidentifiable plants — it was hard to tell whether we were growing the weeds or the strawberries. But the garden we walked out of, later in the afternoon, was different. Fresh strawberry leaves glistened in the sunshine, and the hay we moved from the Community Garden gently blanketed the soil.
We made progress, each person in charge of weeding out one plot of land. With the culmination of our work before my eyes, it felt so joyful and rewarding to first-hand witness the difference we made, as one big team.
Gardening has easily been one of the most defining Workshop experiences for me. I’ve looked forward to it from the start. It’s new, unique, and exciting — after all, not many high schoolers don’t have “gardening” as part of their weekly class schedule. So, to me, gardening exemplified the Workshop’s innovative “experiments in education.”
After finishing Week 3 of Tuesday Gardening, I can say with certainty that learning can indeed happen outside the classroom, in the form of a non-traditional schedule.
During last week’s Weekly Synthesis session (where we essentially gather at the end of the week to reflect and share out about our experience in the workshop), a comment from Dr. Hughes resonated with me. Dr. Hughes said he was pleasantly surprised to see our group’s the laughter and positive energy after two full hours of hard work.
This made me reflect — what about gardening makes me so excited about Tuesdays?
