Hands-On Learning at Japhet Creek

Julia Lewis and Jorge Villalobos conducting research at Japhet Creek.

I love the new community space that my school St. Catherine's Montessori just acquired on Japhet Creek. There's a house that sits on the property that we are going to use as a learning space. It's an old home that has that "used-house" warmth about it. My school will be renting the space for three years and then will be making the decision if they will buy it or not.  Right now, we are spending all our Tuesday and Friday mornings at Japhet.

Liberty Meyn (in pale blue shirt with white sleeves) surrounded by classmates outside the Japhet Creek property.

We are just starting to clean up Japhet, so we can eventually start working on our studies about insects, goats, gardening, farming, water science and many other topics. But first, the cleaning. Some of the groups for cleaning up are: the inside of the house, porch, greenhouse, and in the garden. Each group is helping in different ways to clean up the property.

St. Catherine's Montessori Adolescent Community students taking a break from clearing up a dry creek bed.

We are also doing our occupations there. At my school, occupations are classes where we study “science-y” topics like soap, nutrition, or mycology. For the last couple of weeks, we've been studying goats and creek science. We decided on these two topics by discussing as a whole class the different academic work we might do on the property. Then, we decided what we wanted to study for the end of this year. We will continue our studies about these topics next year as well. Some of the options were architecture, sustainable energy (solar panels, windmills, etc.), botany (plant science study), and so many more.

Rory Gremillion and Chiara Cohen work on clearing up the garden.

I hope for the school to have lots of learning done there and lots of exploring of the property. I think there will be a lot of more original research being done on the property, rather than just looking something up on Google, which I think will be great. It will be a lot of hands-on learning, and I believe you learn more this way. While you're at Japhet, you're there, and you're in the moment. Japhet Creek removes us from the city and allows us to walk through the trees and into the creek. I love it even though I'm not used to the bugs quite yet!