SPECIAL: Join Nail Your School Garden Lesson Plans for Just $49!
Nailing your school garden lesson plans
is the best way to successfully teach YOUR CURRICULUM outside, AND the most effective way to gain your administrators' SUPPORT for a school garden.
Walk away with a complete outline of EXACTLY what you'll teach in a school garden.
The REAL REASON You Can't Have A Successful School Garden UNTIL You Nail Your Lesson Plans
A school garden is a modern learning tool. And no learning tool is useful without a clear plan of how it'll be utilized. Would you ask your administrators to purchase lab equipment for science when you don't have a teaching plan? They won't even know which lab equipment to purchase.
It's just as silly to start a school garden without lesson plans.
That's why nailing your Lesson Plans is where you should start, even if you don't have a school garden yet!
If you do have a school garden, I bet you want to work less, stop trading your personal time for the garden success, and start teaching your curriculum in the garden, during instructional time.
You DON'T WANT to worry about organizing a parents community and begging building managers or other teachers to help you with the garden. You want your students to do EVERYTHING. Not because you're lazy! Because your students won't learn if they don't do the work. PERIOD! And isn't that what a school garden should be all about: education?
The biggest HURDLE I see with struggling school garden enthusiast teachers is they think they should work hard and suffer to have a successful school garden, and when they burn out after one season, they conclude that school gardens are not sustainable!
LOOK—it's easy to blame the school board, the principal, the parents community, other teachers, etc. for not being supportive enough. But let me ask you this question... If all of a sudden, they all became overtly enthusiastic and told you they would throw money at it and you can have the school garden of your dreams tomorrow...
...ARE YOU READY to teach in it? I bet the answer is a resounding NO!
So the truth is you don't have a clear plan that you know will work!
This reality keeps so many amazing teachers from starting a school garden—and so many awesome administrators from even wanting to talk about it. The fear of the garden becoming this huge project that piles on top of everything else that needs to get done in the classroom prevents most teachers and principals from taking even one step further.
OR... (and this breaks my heart every single time)...
...they DO start one without the right plan...
...relying too much on the parents or other teachers...
...or they start an afterschool or lunch-time club (please don't do this! I beg you!)...
...and things don't work out as expected and then they fail or burn out or both (usually both)!
WELL... I'm here with good news! After over 7 years of trial and error and fine-tuning and dealing with all kinds of obstacles in all kinds of school environments, and working closely with so many amazing teachers, I have come up with a complete plan that addresses all your obstacles and gives you the confidence to get started and keep on target.
And it all starts with an outline for your lesson plans. One that you can confidently take to your administrators to show that you can easily manage a school garden when you start one.
Join me and I'll be happy to show you.
Leila
The cold hard truth is:
If you don't nail your lesson plans, you'll never have the confidence to start a school garden OR you'll start one that is destined to fail.
Show me JUST ONE successful school garden that was built without integrated lesson plans and was not heavily reliant on dedicated teachers who sacrificed lots of their personal time, or a dedicated and heavily involved group of parents who either didn't have demanding jobs elsewhere or sacrificed their little almost-nonexistent spare time OR a solid community partner with lots of experience and expertise.
It does not exist!
And even if you do make all those sacrifices and succeed one season...
You won't be able to sustain it!
All school gardens that are successful AND sustainable are built, planted, and maintained by the students, while they are taught their curriculum, during the instructional time.
That's the only way!
When you join us for our $197 $49 CAD Masterclass,
I GUARANTEE you'll walk away by the end of this training with a clear outline of what you will teach in your school garden this spring.
In other words: if you didn't, I will refund your money!
This masterclass is for Elementary Teachers
Can't join live?
No worries! All class recordings, workbooks, and links to bonuses for joining our higher level programs (Yes! We will open registration to them on the Masterclass) will be sent to you if you register now.
After the LIVE masterclass on March 3rd at 7:00 PM EST, the price (ONLY $49 CAD right now) for others, to access the recordings will be $197:
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Which Elementary Grades Is This For?
It's BEST for grades 3 to 8, but it can also work well for kindergarten to grade 2. We suggest you use the lesson plans in what we call a "garden buddy program" with at least one more grade 3 to 8 classroom, ESPECIALLY for building the garden, if you don't have one yet! YES, YOUR STUDENTS EVEN BUILD THE GARDEN as part of their lessons!
If you don't have another higher grade to garden-buddy with, as long as you double the ratio of teachers to students, double the garden time (we talk thoroughly about time in the masterclass), and go for a smaller garden, you can totally do this with lower grades too. You just will need more supervising eyes and more time and patience.
So invite other teachers in your school to the Masterclass (or share the recording with them)! The more the merrier!
Our School Is In A Very Cold Climate. Will This Work For Us?
Absolutely!
We've built school gardens in Toronto, Canada, since 2013 and we grow not only in spring and come back to food (and seeds) to harvest in fall, but we even grow cold crops in fall.
If your school is anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere or on the equator, you can utilize these lesson plans.
If you are in the southern hemisphere and your seasons happen on opposite times to us, you may find it a little difficult to follow.
And there's also indoor gardening that can happen in winter months and nothing is better than having edible greens in the classroom when it's gloomy outside!
What If We Don't Have A "School Garden" Yet?
DON'T LET THAT STOP YOU!
You don't need a huge garden with many raised beds set up to teach your lesson plans. All you need to get started is a sunny window ledge and a few big plastic pots outside in a sunny spot that's close to water access, and a hose. You will also need good organic soil to fill the pots with.
For a class of 20 students, 20 1-foot diameter plastic pots should do!
We won't cover School Garden Design in this Masterclass (we cover it in our higher level programs). But to give you an idea, even if you have a sunny lawn area you could turn into a garden, you won't even need to purchase plastic pots!
Will You Offer Other Programs to Help Me, Beyond Just Lesson Plans?
Registration will open to the following programs at the end of this Live Masterclass:
1) 10 spring lesson plans + 10 accompanying posters bundle (with printing rights for 2 classrooms): $493 CAD
This bundle is best suited for grades 3 to 8
2) D.C.P. School Gardening year-long online course: $997 CAD for 1 teacher and $1,498 CAD for 2 teachers at the same school.
This program is a year-long online course that includes all spring and fall lesson plans and posters, plus how-to video guides for teachers on designing, planning, and teaching their school gardens.
3) D.C.P. School Gardening Plus: $1,997 CAD for 1 teacher and $2,765 CAD for 2 teachers at the same school.
This program is a year-long online course which on top of the D.C.P. course (Level 3), includes a series of taught-for-you video lessons for all 20 spring and fall lessons. Teachers can play these videos instead of, or in addition to, teaching the lessons themselves, and instructions are placed in the videos to pause and do the hands-on activities and then continue after.
Kids' Growing City's team has created 10s of successful and sustainable school gardens, have trained 100s of teachers, and taught 1000s of students how to grow food, through their programs online and on-the-grounds since 2013.
We can help you start a school garden program that produces lots of food and successfully helps you teach your curriculum, year after year.
So what do you say... are you in?
After the LIVE masterclass on March 3rd at 7:00 PM EST, the price for others, to access the recordings and workbook will be $197:
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