School: Raymore Peculiar High School
Class: Botany
Instructor: Carrie Reynolds
Client: Dr. Kristel Barr
Problem: How would you design 4 raised garden beds that would be accessible to students with various disabilities and provide farm-to-table plants that are easy to maintain?
Summary
Students in Botany classes partnered with the Raymore-Peculiar School District to design raised garden beds for the Integrated Learning House, a program supporting students with disabilities in developing independent living skills. Guided by the design thinking process, students worked in teams to create accessible, low-maintenance garden bed proposals. Their designs took into account physical accessibility, sunlight exposure, soil conditions, companion planting, and ease of maintenance. Each team developed a Google Slides pitch and presented their proposed designs to the client, Dr. Kristel Barr, with the goal of creating a sustainable and inclusive farm-to-table gardening experience.
Takeaways
Students learned how to design a raised bed garden that was accessible for students with special needs and that would provide farm-to-table plants. They learned about companion planting, soil pH/nutrient needs for their chosen plants, and plant maintenance. Overall, this was an amazing experience for students.
Advice
It is okay to make mistakes and learn with the students. It is okay for the STUDENTS to make mistakes and take ownership of what they are doing. Nothing is going to be perfect, so you can’t expect that.
Teaching lessons on how to communicate with clients, specific objectives and an adjustable timeline, team-building activities, team contracts, and rubrics that can apply to whatever client project the students are doing, and professionalism/accountability objectives/rubrics for individual students so that they are not solely given team grades I have found to be important.
Standards/Learning Targets
Botany: Students will use the engineering design process to create a solution for a client’s botany problem.