Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[yarrow@sfo.com]

Title: Re: [Livingontheland] Survey (was no subject)

At 2:40 PM -0500 1/12/08, Liz wrote:

The only comment I have is that the way the first three questions are worded might tempt a lot of kids to respond the way they think they are supposed to, rather than giving more honest replies.

>>

I agree, though it's also possible that kids might respond the opposite way if they perceive that the questions are trying to make them respond a certain way. So I would also tend to begin, at least, by asking all open-ended questions. You might also get responses that surprise you this way.

For instance, you could do this.

1. A vegetable that I like to eat from the garden is _____.

2. What I like about being in the garden:

3. What I dislike about being in the garden:

3. Things I have noticed when I am in the garden:

4. What I did today in the garden:

You could experiment with including a checklist of items for each question, if you aren't getting responses from open-ended questions. Depending on the ages of the children, you might want to emphasize "today" as opposed to "all the times I have ever been in the garden." (Or maybe it doesn't depend on age -- I tend to think more about what's going on in my garden now vs. generally.)

One interesting bit of theory that may or may not be useful: I once read an essay that talked about gardens as a place, an idea, and an experience. Community gardens, for instance, are sometimes not rooted in a place, but are about the work and sometimes the idea. I don't know if it's useful to separate these dimensions, but for me, the garden is mostly about the experience of working in it, about what needs to be done. For other people, a garden is about being in a specific place. And for others, it represents an idea. So for the kids, it might be interesting to find out if they interact with the garden, perceive it as tourists, or feel that it symbolizes something.