Archive for March 31st, 2009

This is what the garden looks like now. We’ve got three raised beds. We put out onion sets and the cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower plants we had grown indoors. We’re late getting the cold stuff out, but we’ll see how it goes. We also filled our seed starter with lettuces, spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, basil, and more. This is a wonderful experiment. We hope to be eating out of it soon.

Regular readers of the blog know that I believe the arts are an essential part of successful learning environments. As soon as my first son went to school, I started volunteering to help with arts projects, reading, and bringing artists into his school. As the other two followed, I became even more involved, eventually directing an annual grants budget of $20,000 to bring authors, illustrators, quilters, a paper maker, a mosaic artist, a storyteller, and a mixed media artist into the classrooms. Now that my sons are older, I am doing more of my own creative work as an author and photographer.

I remain committed to the arts in classrooms. I recently visited St. Richard’s Catholic School to conduct professional development in arts integration. I am also nearly finished with a mini-residency at Davis Magnet IB World School, where I have been helping second graders learn about their neighborhood through photography. This blog is being featured right now on the Resources page of Keeping Arts in Schools, an advocacy group. Another local mother who shares my interest in arts integration also blogs about it. Visit her Art Smart Parents blog.