Practicing the Art of Relationships
Maria demonstrates the oil pastel & water color activity as Ruth and Jason listen and watch for directions.
The University of Arizona’s Garden Workshop (SGW) team invited the Indigenous Resilience Center (IRes) to attend a professional learning workshop on January 29, 2025. The workshop was part of a series called Elevating Community Assets and Grounding Learners in Place: Building a School Gardener’s Almanac. Every year the SGW publishes a Garden Almanac and IRes has been invited to help the Service to All Relations (STAR) School design, create and publish a garden almanac for the STAR School’s region.
Ruth, Jason and LaCher were able to attend the hands-on workshop. They began their learning session with a grounding exercise which asked each participant to think about a color and describe it using two adjectives. They learned about Richard Ryan and Edward Deci’s Self Determination Theory (1985) and Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop’s Windows, Mirrors and Sliding Glass Doors Theory (1990). Maria Celis, Pilar Muller, Caleb Ortega, Brittney Palomarez and Moses Thompson prepared Manzo Elementary School’s Food Kitchen with a gallery walk full of self portraits and botany images. Educators engaged in a gallery artifact walk and selected photos of plants, flowers and images. Maria asked the question, what is a portrait? And then we were able to create a self portrait using oil pastels and watercolors. While painting we learned about the color wheel and how to integrate the portrait lesson into the Almanac lessons.
At this time. Jason and LaCher are working with STAR School and their Native Food, Energy and Water Systems (FEWS) educators on creating lessons for STAR School’s almanac. The Native FEWS educators have selected a weaving theme and they plan to add Agrivoltaic lessons about gardening with solar panels. The IRes team looks forward to working with STAR School in April.
Jason, Ruth and Brittany are using water color paints to paint their background.