The Edible Schoolyard and A Night in the Global Village

The Edible Schoolyard
This was a very interesting podcast. It is about an outdoor classroom at Martin Luther King Middle School in California. The outdoor classroom is a garden and an adjacent classroom. The teacher reinforces concepts taught in the classroom. She reinforces social studies, math, science, and life skills. The students learn how to cooperate and build communities. Students that have certain strengths and weaknesses in the classroom may have different strengths and weaknesses outside in the garden. Thus allowing students that perform lower in the classroom achieve a different status outside. The students are learning things that we do not teach in schools any longer. For example, they are learning the importance of farming, harvesting, cooking, how to set a table, and take pride in your work. They are also learning patience and concentration skills.

I think that this is a great idea. I am firm believer in every moment being a teachable moment and learning experience. I also think that it is important to venture outside of the classroom for teachable moments. Students learn in different ways, by seeing, feeling, smelling, and tasting. By teaching outside of the textbook, students have many more opportunities to learn and be interested in learning. Students get bored of the same old boring cookie cutter educational experience.

A Night in the Global Village
Rocky Mountain School of Exp Learning-Denver
Part National Geographic, part Survivor
The movie will only play the first 29 seconds, when I try to skip the part where it stops, it restarts.