„Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I may not remember. Involve me and I will understand.” (Native American Saying) Modern trends in teaching lean towards inclusion of students with disabilities in general education classrooms in inclusive neighbourhood schools and community settings. (Council for Exceptional Children Policy ..., 1993). Today, almost every classroom includes a number of students who are dealing with a disability -- either physical, educational, emotional, or a combination of all three. It is impossible to refrain an autistic child , one with Asperger’s syndrome, with behaviour and ADHD disorder , mentally impaired to the 45 - 50 minute classroom environment even though having support on the part of modern multimedia. As teachers, we constantly look for resources that will help us effectively teach those students and help them learn successfully. The project „Let me Bloom Let me Shine” translates it into concrete gardening activities with a view to improving teaching skills and methods of work with SEN students and promoting good practices as regards respect for the environment. The main goal of this project is to provide a welcoming educational space in which to explore garden through hands-on learning and experimentation, link the project activities across curriculum , improve nutrition, teach environmental education and foster relationships with peers, family and community. Gardening is undoubtedly an engaging activity for all children, yet as gardens provide "real world" examples and experiences that make learning more meaningful it becomes particularly beneficial for SEN students. During the implementation of the project we will create and maintain flower gardens, greenhouses, vegetable gardens accordingly to the change of the seasons within our schools’ yards, run the ecological activities like Earth Day, Planting, Picnic, Harvest and Vegetable Day, organize workshops for teachers to learn and exchange the methods and approaches regarded dealing with SEN students(Autism and ADHD). The project directly addresses 50 teachers working with SEN children, 50 SEN students and 125 NON SEN children in the partner schools account for the project group. Yet by its nature the project will involve our schools’ whole communities. The coordinating institution is the school from Poland. Among the partners there are schools with greater experience of work with special needs students like Poland and Turkey, and those that try to establish the strategy towards SEN students with own resources like Italy and Spain. All the partners have school grounds to carry out gardening activities. Within this project we will prepare international programme of implementation the gardening activities into education of students with Autism and ADHD, gardens, green areas and greenhouses in our schools, CDs, video clips of all the gardening actions , Power Point presentations about the system of education of each partner country, booklets of different plants and vegetation of each country, lesson plans, worksheets, including teaching different subject through the use of the gardening practises, dictionary of phrases related to the project , murals, project boards, photo albums, project logo, the common guide with all the ideas concerning the methods of teaching SEN students based on workshops, project’s website and facebook group Let us Bloom,Let us Shine. There will be four short-term exchanges of groups of pupils (Poland - Oct 2018, Italy- April 2019, Spain-October 2019, Turkey- April 2020, ) where participating SEN children will have trainings on gardening activities, nutrition and eating habits improvement and accompanying teachers will participate in trainings and workshops on dealing with autistic and adhd behaviour. We will use schools' and Erasmus+ websites, facebook page, youtube, leaflets, posters and Glogster, we will organize open Erasmus+ Days and link our Erasmus+ website to organisations' websites of regional, national and European scope. After the end of the EU grant we will have better qualified teachers working with Special Need Students. We all will tend the established gardens around our schools. We will use the international programme of implementing gardening activities to teaching different subjects like Science, Maths, Technology, Art, Literature, Social science into individual educational and therapeutic plans of special need students who will enter our schools. And last but not least we will keep in mind that it is the school setting where each student can safely acquire and practice skills necessary to participate in the adult world and should have the opportunity to bloom.
Within our project we kept in mind the words of Native American Saying „Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I may not remember. Involve me and I will understand.” As trends in teaching lean towards inclusion of students with disabilities in general education and almost every classroom includes a number of students who are dealing with a disability -- either physical, educational, emotional, we took this into consideration while conducting our project. It turned out to be a golden mean and enabled us to engage the students in need in its activities as it is impossible to refrain an autistic child , with Asperger’s syndrome, behaviour and ADHD disorder , mentally impaired to the regular classroom environment even having support of modern multimedia. As teachers, we constantly look for resources that will help us effectively teach. The project 'Let me Bloom Let me Shine' based on concrete gardening activities with a view to improving teaching skills and methods of work with SEN students and promoting good practices with respect for the environment. Our main goal was to provide a welcoming educational space to explore garden through hands-on learning and experimentation, to link the project activities across curriculum , improve nutrition, teach environmental education and foster relationships with peers, family and community. As we assumed gardening was undoubtedly an engaging activity for all our students since it provided "real world" and made learning more meaningful. SEN and non SEN children enjoyed working together in schools’ gardens and were proud of themselves and the results. We created and maintained flower gardens, greenhouses, vegetable gardens accordingly to the change of the seasons, run the ecological activities: Earth Day, Planting, Picnic, Harvest and Vegetable Day, Baked Potato Feast, Ecological Gaming Competitions, organized workshops for teachers to learn and exchange the methods and approaches regarded SEN students education, had trips and excursions with our students to the places relevant to the topic of the project. The project addressed 50 teachers working with SEN children, 50 SEN students and 125 NON SEN children together with their parents. Yet by its nature it involved our schools’ whole communities. The coordinator was the school from Poland. Among the partners were schools with greater experience of work with SEN students like Poland and Turkey, and less experienced like Italy and Spain. Within this project we prepared international programme of implementation of the gardening activities into education of students with Autism and ADHD, we have the gardens, inspect boxes, green areas and greenhouses established, the photos, video clips of gardening actions taken, Power Point presentations referring to the project activities, presenting our schools and towns done. Our students made posters, booklets of plants and vegetation of each country. We have lesson plans, worksheets, including teaching through the use of the gardening practises and the dictionary of phrases related to the project The schools’ walls are decorated with project murals. We have project’s logo, the project’s website, the padlet and project's facebook group. There were three LTTs organised on location (Poland - February 2019, Italy - May 2019, Spain - February 2020, and last virtual one to Turkey - June 2021 due to covid-19 pandemics) where participating SEN and non SEN children had trainings on gardening activities, nutrition and eating habits improvement and accompanying teachers participated in workshops on dealing with autistic students and adhd behaviour. We used schools' and project's websites, facebook page, youtube. We have leaflets,and posters made. We organized Erasmus+ Days and promoted our activities to the schools' and local communities, the local media, the local schools, educational boards, insitutions and authorities of our towns. Having worked together for three years we have better qualified teachers working with Special Need Students. We all tend the established gardens around our schools. We use the international programme of implementing gardening activities to teaching different subjects like Science, Maths, Technology, Art, Literature, Social science into individual educational and therapeutic plans of special need students who are educated in our schools. And last but not least we keep in mind that it is the school setting where each student can safely acquire and practice skills necessary to participate in the adult world and should have the opportunity to bloom. Our gardens are one of them. As a partner team we had to overcome financial, organisational, health difficulties, experienced new situation which undoubtedly remote teaching and pandemics was, yet in a group of cooperating and supportive people we found solutions alltogether based on respect, trust and understanding which eventually made us stronger and better equipped for what the future holds.