I never knew how much of a grownup I was in danger of becoming until this year. The more I teach, the more I realize a classroom is a fountain of youth.  Kids and their hope is absolutely the best anecdote for a list full of why nots.  Making the decision to become a fully project based classroom was challenging…but dreaming with the kids about how we could improve the planet was downright dangerous.  8 year old are totally sure of themselves.  They never doubt their ability to solve world hunger, or clean the ozone.  And my pack of dreamers decided they wanted to create a bat garden to provide habitat for local bats who are threatened by blight.

That amazingly breathless moment of inspiration…where all of us were caught up in the vision and excitement of a journey to create an outdoor classroom, soon became the grim reality of finding funds.  Grant writing is not for the weak of heart.  And even though the kids helped, there were midnight deadline submissions and 4:30AM search sessions.  All told I submitted 7 different grant applications.  I was thrilled and satisfied with our efforts…until the rejections started to come in.  It was so hard to read the polite no thank you’s…but even harder to share them with the class and staff.  Private failure is challenging but public failure strips away at your pride.  And mine started to feel a bit bruised by Christmas.

Still, a core value of F.L.I.G.HT.  is Failing Forward.  And failure is the only way to get to success. I also had to explain that failure doesn’t happen because you made a mistake…but sometimes you fail because you tried.  The key is to look at the failure and find the lesson.  Our lesson was to be gritty and to think about finding another way.  In January I was contacted by the director of Kensington’s Church Shelby Campus.  They were looking for a school partner and wondered if I would be interested in meeting with them.  By March we had a plan, the West Utica Community Garden was the Spring Serve project for the church and they were going to donate the supplies to bring our garden to life!

On Saturday, April 23^rd our garden was born.  Over 60 volunteers, huge landscaping trucks, roto tillers, farming experts, teachers, and students attended the birth.  A cut metal sign based on the design of one of my students was used to dedicate the garden. It was a bright sunny day of celebration.  And a reminder of the power of dreaming BIG.

Our garden is a real world space to learn.  Last week we measured the area and perimeter and drew a scaled map.  Our farmer, Kyle Anderson visited to check on our plants and explain the growing process.  This week we will be studying worms and writing an opinion piece about spending grant funds (Yes, we actually did win $1500 from Scott’s Miracle Grow) to develop a worm composting bin.    Our garden is helping us to take F.L.I.G.HT. as we remember our mission on earth is that when reach out to save others, in the end we save ourselves