Seed Saving PD at Chiefess Kapiʻolani Elementary

On April 10, 2024, HISGN Program Director, Eleonor Leite-Ah Yo and HISGN Garden Educator and Outreach Coordinator, Donna Mitts, made their way to Chiefess Kapiʻolani Elementary School in Hilo. With the help of Topher Pike, 5th grade teacher, they developed an hour-long PD for the faculty and staff of Chiefess Kapiʻolani, following the February garden workday that was hosted at the school.

On February 10th, Topher Pike has taken the lead on getting a garden area set-up for the school. With the help of Donna Mitts, their garden workday was a success, setting up small planter boxes filled with beans and sun hemp. Thanks to funding provided by the the Department of Health, Topher set aside moneys for each grade level to support efforts to bring education outdoors into the garden. But setting up the garden and giving each grade level money to spend isn’t quite enough.

With future sights in mind, Topher and Principal Castillo, saved one of their Wednesday faculty meetings to bring in HISGN to deliver professional development training to the faculty and staff at Chiefess Kapiʻolani Elementary. A former math educator herself, Eleonor pulled Common Core Math standards for each grade level from Kindergarten through 6th grade and developed a lesson related to Donna Mitts’ origami seed packet activity.

The faculty/staff started the afternoon off with a little warm-up having to do with bean jokes and puns which led to Donna’s presentation and guide on folding origami paper to make seed packets for a handful of bush bean seeds that were distributed to each participant. Donna provided tips on how to store the seeds and when to anticipate planting them. This was followed by the math activity for each grade level.

The goal of this PD was to provide educators with an easy garden activity that they could implement with their students, all while covering content standards that of course, are necessary and unavoidable as a classroom teacher. Though math was chosen as the content focus for this PD, teachers were given the opportunity to go further and consider how other content standards might be met through the lens of this seed saving garden activity.

Hopefully these educators are inspired to bring garden education to life for their haumāna and will get their hands dirty, literally, in those new garden beds, next school year!