Gardening gives students hands-on learning
Jennifer Johnson teaches life science classes at Philadelphia High School and for the last couple of years she and her botany students have been raising a garden.
“I teach a botany class which is the study of plants,” said Johnson, who 10 years ago living in New York City and going to nursing school might have never imagined doing. “So, we have made a raised-bed garden using old tires as our pots.
Right now they have all of their cold weather vegetables planted. “The kids have had an amazing time watching the vegetables grow,” she said.
“We are growing broccoli, collard greens, purple cabbage and green cabbage, curly kale and lettuce. We will be having salad when we are done.”
She also teaches the college-level biology class and human anatomy.
“Many of our kids don’t know where their food comes from,” Johnson said. “There aren’t that many gardens in town. They are getting to watch the process of their food growing from seed to harvest.
Johnson believes in hands-on learning.
“It is something I thought would be good and they are enjoying it. They were out there with shovels and getting the soil ready,” Johnson said.
“When we harvest these around March we will put in potatoes. We are out during the summertime so the cold weather vegetables really give a chance to watch the process.”
Johnson’s father and grandparents are from Philadelphia. They have a farm off of Highway 21 near the south entrance of the Nanih Waiya Wildlife Management area.
She was born in Greenwood and went to high school in North Carolina. She earned a degree in anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
She later moved to New York City where she went to Columbia University and earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing.
She became a nurse practitioner and was teaching when about six years ago it became necessary for her to move to Philadelphia so she could take care of her mom.
Johnson took some time off. Then she started teaching at Philadelphia about four years ago.
“I may have been living in New York but I’m a country girl at heart,” Johnson said. “When I moved back, I started planting everything at our farm. You wouldn’t believe how many tomatoes I had.”
Johnson said she can cover many subjects in the garden. “In the study of plants, we are learning about the life cycle,” Johnson said.
“When we are talking about environmental science, we are talking about how we affect nature and how important plants are to us, regardless of being food, by 100 other ways.
“Now we are into the study of ecosystems and the interaction of the environment with our plants.”
Teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic has been a challenge.
“I have several kids who are virtual kids,” said Johnson. “It has worked much better than I thought it would. At the very least, we are in school with a lot of our kids. I feel like we have done well.”