Planting Seeds

We have arranged to meet with Diane's friend, Matthew Gilbert, Tuesday after class. Matt is a teacher at an all-boys Episcopalian boarding choir school (interesting, we know). They have a website, www.choirschool.org. From what Diane has told us, Matt is very open to our invading his 5th grade classroom and will give us a lot of freedom, which is important to us. We chose this school, not only because of the pre-existing contact, but because of the flexibility the private school environment allows us with curriculum. We hope to take advantage (in a good way) of the religious environment and have important discussions regarding ethics and morals of food and agriculture.
In writing our first draft of our final paper, we've decided to focus on two main topics: Small, sustainable farming and Organic foods and farming. We hope that this smaller scope will enable us to dig deeper to the roots of these issues. Since we will be working with 5th graders, older than we had anticipated from the beginning, we will be more open to such activities as debates, and more independent activities. I'm sure the boys will know a lot already, so I hope to learn from Matt what has been covered and what will be of value to them. This is the goal of our project anyway, to create something lasting and valuable- for the kids and for us and for the planet.
We've changed our format slightly and will go into the class in pairs for two sessions and have a third session where all of us attend. This will be more of a celebration, maybe we will create a class mural and munch on organic snacks. Maybe we can write a song about farming (they are all singers after all) or perform a skit. Things are looking up for us, and we are happily moving forward with our stewardship project.