Six Steps to Build an Inclusive School Garden

Help for Special Educators

Dawn Ellis of Cultivating Exceptional Minds has developed a school garden that is inclusive of all types of disabilities. Hear about many ways the garden is used to provide real-life learning activities for the whole school, in all subject areas. Moreover, students are more engaged during lessons in the garden... which results in less behavior problem! They help plant, weed, water, harvest, cook and even eat what is grown.
Dawn gives great advice on how to you can start your own garden. She also gives advice on how to get donations to keep it going, as well as lots of curriculum ideas to provide real-life practice.
Get all the show notes with links and a handout you can take notes on at https://lisagoodell.com/4. I am also working on getting transcripts of all episodes, so those will be on the show notes pages as well.
About My Guest:
Dawn Ellis has been a special education teacher for 10 years. She has taught preschool through fifth grade in various settings such as inclusion, resource, homebound and self-contained. Dawn has an Ed Specialist degree in Early Childhood Special Education but is also certified in general education too. She was the District V Teacher of the Year in 2017 for Alabama. She has presented at district and state-wide conferences about her garden and other special education topics. On the weekends in the spring, she is a volunteer coach for the Miracle League baseball program in her town. She is married and has one son (age 2). When not teaching, Dawn enjoys being at the beach, reading and working on her teacher created materials/blog.
Podcast Host:
Lisa Goodell, M. A., is the host of the Help for Special Educators Podcast. She has been teaching for over 23 years, including general ed third grade, and special ed K-12 including resource/inclusion (RSP), and mild/moderate self-contained (SDC). Currently, she is an itinerant orthopedic impairment (OI) specialist/teacher for students birth to 21 years old in all general ed and special ed settings. She has been honored as “Teacher of the Year” at both the elementary and secondary level. She lives in rural Central California with her family and a bunch of cats. Connect with Lisa here.