Get your hands on plants

Readers, I'm a night owl. It is a tough sell to get me out of bed, nevermind dressed and at a workshop at the crack of 9am. Especially during the summer, and especially the Monday after school lets out. But every so often an amazing opportunity comes along that has me out of bed and excitedly biking headlong into a humid, 100F+ degree day: the U.S. Botanic Gardens' HOPS Teacher Institute was one of these instances.

Over the course of two, very busy days this past June, I and a couple dozen other environmental educators explored water, soil, sunlight, and plants in ways that I can't wait to bring back to my classroom. We got to play with all kinds of cool gadgets: looking at the critters wriggling around in water droplets under our microscopes; analyzing soil samples as part of a CSI-style plant theft mystery; discovering that grape juice has more sugar than cola using our refractometers; making our own sundials; building a model watershed; making found object collages with photo paper and the power of the sun. We got to mess around with pH testing strips, create botanic paintings, dissect flowers, melt chocolate in a solar cooker, and fiddle with thermometers and compasses. I think my favorite moment was getting to poke at a venus fly trap. I'm sure that video clip, which for some reason I cannot locate, will surface if I run for public office one day....

Many thanks to our fearless instructor, Lee, who sent us all home with a GIANT bag filled with all of the tools we used throughout the training, so that we can get out students excited about plants and their surroundings, too! If you ever have a chance to attend this summer teacher training at the Botanic Gardens, go!!

(Ah, this photo? It's my view from Ollie's saddle, biking down Pennsylvania Avenue with our treasure trove of scientific tools, posters, and a banana tree seedling last week.)