I love the way that somethings just happen naturally. This year, my Green Industries class seemed to grow organically as a result of some professional development that I opted to take in the fall.
Last year, I found that my knowledge of the content in the horitculture and forestry areas of the Green Industries course was sorely lacking. Identifying trees? Understanding the latin names of plants? Teaching students how to prune trees? Not exactly an Art History grad's forté. So, I signed up for a course at Humber College in Horticultural Science...and I fell in love. With trees.
My passion for the subject grew exponentially each week as I attended classes. That passion clearly came through in my classes and I exclaimed things like "Photosynthesis is incredible!" to my students chagrin. Studying plant families, genus, and species tapped into my science loving side and next thing I knew I was a bonafide tree hugger. So much so that when I heard about a 12 hour course called "Tree Tenders" put on by the local non-profit LEAF, I signed up immediately. This course not only provided me with a much deeper understanding of these magical creatures, but also inspired me to involve my students in a meaningful project connected to a real life situation.
And that situation was dire: the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) is an invasive insect that is slowly, but surely, devouring Ontario's Ash trees. LEAF has a program called the Emerald Ash Borer Ambassadors, designed to educate citizens about the dangers of the EAB and how to recognize it in their community. I signed up my Grade 11 Green Industries class and set about teaching them everything I knew about the EAB.
Then as a group we set out into the neighbourhood to share our knowledge of the EAB. Students went door to door with LEAF pamphlets about the EAB and explained the situation to those who were kind enough to listen to them. At first the students were nervous and didn't want to talk to random strangers about a little blue bug. But, after a couple successful conversations (I loved overhearing Luka tell an elderly woman that there were 860,000 Ash trees in Toronto that were in danger), they gained confidence.
As we all know, teaching is the best way to learn. I not only aced my course at Humber, but my students became deeply aware of a real issue facing Toronto's urban forest. In addition, the content that I leared in these courses helped me beef up the first unit on Urban Forests; add a second unit on Soil Science; and improve the delivery of content in the third unit on Urban Argiculture. In this third unit, I was able to address a weakness that I identified last year by creating smaller chunks of information that were delivered throughout the unit rather than front loading content.
And as for my love affair with these perennial woody plants, it continues -- as can clearly be seen on my new Twitter account that I use to communicate with students: @geek_plant.
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