Community Based Unit of Instruction

I designed a community-based unit of instruction in my Plant Sciences course. I implemented community in all of my courses, but the Greenhouse Management unit in Plant Science is designed to implement all of the requirements of a community-based unit of instruction. Unfortunately, because of season timing I will not be present for all of the unit implementation. With the help of my cooperating teacher I contacted Lisa Ward as a guest speaker in the class. I also designed the unit so that the Plant Science course can put their knowledge of vegetable growing to the test by setting up a garden for the Tioga County Homeless Initiative. The funding for this project was secured through the Hunger Heroes Mini-Grant where the FFA gets $500 for the completion of this garden. Bringing together the funds, guest speaker, and setting up the garden are all critical to showing the students how essential community involvement is.

Lisa Ward is the Northeast Area Sales Manager for Sakata, a wholesale vegetable seed company with a long history of breeding and producing breakthrough vegetable varieties. Lisa lives in Wellsboro because it is central to her area that ranges from PA up into the New England states. She graciously accepted to come into the Plant Science course and give them an insight into opportunities in plants and a little about breeding. She presented to the students about the company which breeds varieties to get ideal vegetables through trials to eventually commercially sell. Students had the opportunity to learn how different products are created to cater to producers and also about Lisa and her experience. She shared about opportunities and how to take advantage of them. She encouraged them to never doubt themselves and to find a job that fits them. She used herself as an example and talked about how she gets to travel and do what she loves.

The next part of the community-based unit of instruction has to do with the success of the garden. Students will develop an understanding of the status of homelessness in their community by working with the Tioga County Homeless Initiative. I filled out the Hunger Heroes Mini-Grant to secure $500 for the supplies to successfully implement a garden for the homeless. I met with the manager who intends to have the residents maintain the garden, consume the vegetables, and donate any unneeded vegetables to the food pantry. Starting in the beginning of May the plant science course will start preparing the garden. They will be designing the area where the garden will be put in and start planting the purchased seeds. Throughout the rest of the school year the plant science class will be maintaining the garden.