One question I have in my mind as I begin my journey towards teaching is whether I think of myself as a math teacher or a teacher who specializes in math. The difference is in a way somewhat subtle, but for me, the distinction matters greatly. If I am a teacher who happens to teach math as my main subject, that helps me to think through the fact that I am of course always teaching a great deal more than mathematical content to my students.
This opening reflection brings me my main "stop" in reading Gerofsky's article, "What we have learned from campus teaching and learning gardens: The UBC Orchard Garden and Cultivating Learning Network." This stop wasn't first in terms of where it occurred in the article, but rather it is first in significance for me as I reflect on my reading: on page 110, Gerofsky writes, "In acknowledging the garden as co-teacher, we are concerned with developing empathetic relationships with living ecosystems." The reason this is my primary stop is actually two-fold.
First, this was the moment when it became clear to me that while there are some ways the garden can be used to teach math (or any other subject), the garden itself has something to teach all of us, quite independent of whatever subject we happen to be focused on. That is to say, simply the act of having my students spend time thinking, working, dialoguing, and conversing in a beautiful natural space such as the garden teaches them something about what it means to be a human person in the world. Gerofsky continues: "The quality of empathetic relationships with the living world is of deep importance in the development of sustainable ways of thinking and living...the methods developed in Enlightenment/Modernist sciences and technology involved a distancing and separation of human researchers from the rest of the living world, with an increasing emphasis on logic and rationality and a repression of emotion, spirituality and even respect for other, non-human forms of life" (p. 110).
If that is all true - and I deeply believe it is - I have a responsibility as a teacher to work towards something better for my students. This was the second reason for this "stop" in my reading. I was led to reflect on the fact that math is a subject that for many connects directly and most naturally to our modern, industrial, technological society. That is, math is implicated in what Gerofsky describes regarding "Enlightenment/Modernist sciences and technology." It must then be part of my goal as a teacher to give my students a different perspective. Doing math in a garden (or some such place) would no doubt strike many students (and parents? and administrators?) as jarring, perhaps "odd," maybe ill-advised. But the act of teaching and learning in a garden-space is all the more important for just that reason: we need to counter "the human-centric approaches of modernity," as Gerofsky puts it. And would it not be more natural to reflect on and be inspired by the beauty of mathematics when one is surrounded by the beauty of the natural world of which we as mathematical thinkers are also a part? To put it simply, kids (and all of us) need to spend time in nature - so why not spend it there while doing mathematics? Goodness knows that many of them get precious little such time outside of school, what with our busy modern lives and the always-accessible phones and screens that fill our existence.
(There were other stops for me in this article, but I feel most strongly about the one I just described, so I'll not mention the others here.)
But what does this all mean practically? First of all, it means that at the school where I teach I need to identify and/or begin a project to create a suitable outdoor space where class can sometimes meet. Perhaps this will be straightforward, or perhaps not. Perhaps other teachers would be on-board and willing to help and participate in garden-based learning. Secondly, it would require some physical elements and a way to get them there - such as bucket seats or something similar, a rolling blackboard (or whiteboard, I suppose), maybe benches. (There would also have to be some convenient way to store those items in a shed or in the school building, perhaps.) Thirdly, it would require dealing with the elements...especially in BC in the winter! Perhaps, depending on location, it would have to be a fall and spring season garden primarily. And fourthly, it would require establishing a culture of teaching in this way. I would need to be dedicated to it and work at experimenting with what works and what doesn't. I do not yet know all the ways I could teach math with the garden - I think those would need to develop over time. But growing as a teacher working in a garden or natural setting would create a culture of learning that is unique and hopefully transformative for me as well as my students, in ways that go far beyond the mathematical content itself.
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