Courses:

College Credit: Horticulture Pathway

Student-Run Business:

Seneca Florist and Greenhouse

Facilities to Support Active Learning:

Skills:

Unique Experiences:

Student-Centered Learning:

A Message from Ms. Mattingly:

With feet planted firmly on the historic cobblestone of a Boston, Massachusetts sidewalk, in 2017 I stared down at a marker embedded into the sidewalk, a memorial for the first public school in the United States of America. My teacher's soul found connection in the mosaic of the alphabet and numbers, with the depictions of classrooms filled with students and teachers. The Boston Latin School was revolutionary for its time, providing educational opportunities to the youth of Boston. Many people privately educated their children in their homes or paid for others to educate them at the time. Schools were not unheard of, but many times they were out of reach for the vast majority of families and children often worked to help support their families, making school an option only for those rich enough for it. The genius of common public schools led to a transformation of our culture surrounding education. Youth was a time for learning—reading, writing, and arithmetic were staples that every child should learn to be a productive adult. Such a radical stance couldn’t have been easy, but now, we know it as common and where would we be without it? The Boston Latin school touts many famous alumni such as Ben Franklin, John Adams, and John Handcock, many of our nation’s founders. Each of these alumni in their own right transformed their world and though I haven’t found exacting evidence, I believe as an educator that their work wouldn’t have been possible without their teachers thinking beyond the norm, to create a better place of learning for more students and through their students a better world, a place where the public paid for a future of its children.

We are in need of such a transformation in education again. Commonly called the “sit and get” method that was probably common in the Boston Latin School when it started, is not enough for our students of today. Student-based learning transforms classrooms from lecture halls to centers of personal growth in not just academic, but also leadership, communication, and collaborative learning. The world in the times of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, or Thomas Jefferson is not the world we have now. International travel, world-wide economics, a soaring world population, and climate change, just to name a few, are all new challenges that we need to prepare our students for. A host of other challenges we aren’t even aware of yet are also on that preparatory list. Students must have what they need as adults to solve the problems we aren’t even aware of yet. That is a tall list for public education. It’s even taller when we consider that students' needs in school aren’t just academic, but varied in nature. Schools are sources of food, comfort, love, clothing, and so much more for our most vulnerable young people. Before we can even access the parts of our brain that build knowledge, we have to first feel secure. Add that to the list of what we, in education, must provide. As amazing as the first public school is, we know it truly did not provide a place for every child. In fact, it still doesn’t due to a rigorous application process. What once was transformational for American education, is now not enough. Contemporary education needs to support an entire child to allow knowledge to take root, discover who that child is to provide relationships and connection, and arm that child with tools that will discover, evaluate, and solve tomorrow’s problems as well as today’s. This tall order will not be achieved without significant change.

The chart below showcases changes that can be made to transform a traditional classroom to a student-centered classroom, goals of each method, practices teachers can implement to ensure success of the method, and impact of the change overall within the classroom.

The standard classroom is made up of desks in straight rows, making an independent learning method first. My classroom, as a student-focused room, is collaborative with students seated in groups of teams providing a collaborative environment, emphasizing the common pedagogy that we learn by teaching others. My classroom also features a supply shelf with every material a student may need in my classroom from basic pens and pencils, to creativity tools, and magazines. New this year is a bookshelf full of books on Horticulture topics. To stretch literacy skills, my students will be selecting a book to read during the year and to discuss with those at their table. With five different books, each student has the opportunity to choose where their interest lies. My classroom is decorated with the brightest and most inviting decor available, not to make the space look pretty, but to provide a sanctuary like home where it feels, in the words of a student this past week, “we are going to do something awesome.” I want the culture of my classroom to be safety first-where students feel like they are secure enough to go outside of their comfort zone and try something new. All learning is building new experiences on old, but students have to feel reasonably secure to take that leap. With a focus on my classroom, I can transform it from a standard classroom to a student-focussed environment.

The one-room schoolhouse also featured a teacher who was the source of all information. My role as a teacher is to guide and help students find what they need to succeed. My curriculum is built around project-based learning in every course I teach. The reason I include projects that solve real world problems is because I see the transformation of students who take part in them. They build confidence when their ideas become solutions, they learn how to think outside the box to challenge boundaries, and to really dig in to a topic. One of the project-based learning units I have created took learning communication skills from notes and some examples to real communication debating the use of GMO’s, or Genetically Modified Organisms, in the school cafeteria. This PBL is one that students talk about all through their high school years because learning how to effectively communicate their thoughts through verbal, written, and visual methods is a skill they have officially mastered. The difference between student-focused learning and a standard classroom is a student who knows information, versus a student who can use skills to solve problems.

In Principles of AgriScience this looks like students building a foundation in the fall, and then designing their own AgriScience Fair project. One of the highlights of this past year has been having a student rank Bronze in the National FFA AgriScience Fair competition on a project of her choice and interest. This has taught me that I should continue to pursue student choice and hands-on projects in my classroom.

In Greenhouse class, the students run part of a student-enterprise, Seneca Greenhouse and Florist. In Greenhouse classes across the United States, agriculture teachers tell students what to plant, when to plant, how to sell, and how to market. My students will learn every aspect of running a greenhouse and then put it into practice sowing seeds, transplanting, scheduling, marketing, and selling the plants they have grown to the community, but all will be led by them. They choose what to plant, when to plant, and work collaboratively in teams to ensure each product is ready by Opening Day. When reading and listening to student-focused learning initiatives, this class immediately came to mind. I will guide and advise–but they take the reins and really make the greenhouse sale a success for the entire community.

In Floral and Landscape Design, students are the other part of the Seneca Greenhouse and Florist, a student-run enterprise. Each year students hire classmates as CEO’s, Vice Presidents, Marketing experts, Customer Service Representatives, and Sales Associates for this business. They sell flowers and designs of their own making and find a lot of success doing so. This year I’m going to challenge these students with a project called the Seneca Flower Club, where they will have one customer for the entire year that they will make custom arrangements for in addition to our other sales. This challenge will push their creativity, collaboration, and business skills in a way they haven’t been asked to reach thus far.

Advanced Horticulture students are in their senior year and will seek a horticulture-related project to accomplish as a class. Some options will be reclaiming an abandoned Tree Library on the school campus, identifying trees, redesigning and installing markers, creating a learning pathway through the trees, and cataloging the trees there; providing funding for and installing a school orchard with fruit that will be ripe while school is in session; or revitalizing the school’s landscaping grounds including a courtyard. These senior projects will challenge the class to think beyond what they know to solve problems, work together, and most importantly–prepare them for a future of challenges that they’ll need to invent and create tools to solve. Collectively, as students grow and learn through my pathway of classes, they will collect tools that will support their learning, challenge them in new ways, and ask them to reach new depths of experiences, all of which will prepare them for an ever-changing and complex world. These projects will build their knowledge of Horticulture standards but in tactile and kinesthetic ways that will transform what they learn from just knowledge to skills and tools they can take with them to their future.

Years from when the first public school opened, we can look back at it with faults to who was allowed in those rooms, the teaching methods used, those it still left out, and with a note sheet full of changes, but first we have to appreciate the jump it took to establish it first. The seed of the first public school transformed the idea of school for generations. Our current schools aren’t perfect and are in need of another revolution to a more student-focused learning environment that in most cases the first public schools lacked, but they still are a place where every child has an opportunity to learn. As the education profession learned more about how students learn, we discovered that a sit and get method, separation from peers, and knowledge only, just isn’t enough. The world is bigger, more complex, and in need of problem solvers. We as educators need to provide students with more than knowledge. They need skills and tools to go into the world. My classroom from the first step will be and continue to evolve until it is a place that every student gains every skill they need for their future.