MIS gardening club

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A sustainable school environment is part of the core vision of the Magellan International School. Since 2012, the MIS Sustainability Program, with the support of staff, students and parents, has been implementing curricular and extracurricular activities to promote nutrition, organic gardening, renewable energy and conservation, zero waste, and service learning. The MIS Organic Gardening Club is a new extension of the MIS Sustainability Program, an effort to offer an extracurricular (afterschool) experience for MIS students where they can develop skills and experience the benefits of organic gardening while also gaining leadership skills.

During the first quarter of 2014 school year, the school conducted a series of MIS Organic Gardening Club pilot sessions, the goal of which were to identify the interest and vision of MIS parents and students in regards to growing in our green spaces at the Anderson Lane campus, as well as to begin to carrying that vision out. The pilot consisted of 5 bilingual sessions, each one integrating hands-on activities focused on basic concepts with participatory dialogue between the students and staff. The sessions incorporated research, discussion, communication and reflexion, as outlined in the IB profile.

Mr. Ethan Vlah (MIS Organic Garden Club Director) and Mrs. Sayuri (MIS Green Coach) led this effort.  (Since the initial 5 sessions, the Club has continued to meet bi-weekly, with only Mr. Vlah.)  Fourteen students (K-6) were involved. (See the Appendix A for a complete list of students).  Laura Helmueller served as Parent Coordinator and her mother, a master gardener, led a master class on native species and donated various native flowers for a future flower garden.  Sessions ran from 3:30 to 5:30 at AL campus at no cost to parents. Students from K-6 volunteered to be part of the effort and parents filled out a registration form.  The sessions were held in the MIS Technology Room and, of course, outdoors in the gardens.

The agenda of these sessions included beginning each session with a Club meeting.  These meetings were the first step toward one of the core goals of the Club - empowering students to be  leaders -  and demonstrated to the students how to organize and agenda and use a stack (speaking one at a time) to create an agenda of old and new business.   Then, there was a presentation of, discussion about and reflexion upon a concept (such as native plants), followed by hands on activities outdoors, such as planting and harvesting.  It should be noted that, because this is a new club, a significant amount of time was spent in discussion and planning with the students about how we want our Club to work.  Nonetheless, a significant amount of gardening was done outdoors.