This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.
My Students
I have extraordinary students with limited resources, but they are courageous and have a zealous spirit to achieve greatness in mathematics and beyond. All my students attend a math, science, and technology magnet as they have shown an affinity for the content.
My students have so much character and creativity to think outside of the box.
This is shown by their desire to go deeper with mathematics and by their creativity in assigned projects.
We are located in the San Fernando Valley, just north of Los Angeles. All of my students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.
My Project
After 10 years of teaching mathematics, I created lessons on how can I make math accessible to my students while bringing in the parents as authentic partners. The answer is through gardening. Second to mathematics, my passion for gardening is ubiquitous. I talk about it frequently, I share my produce I grow among the staff and show students pictures.
After teaching about exponential growth, the idea came to me about using the growth of alfalfa spouts as it models an exponential growth function.
Besides being one of the best nutrient-rich dense foods it is one of the easiest and quickest plants to grow (5 - 7 days). My goal is to show my students and parents how easily they can translate the concepts of mathematics into gardening. Concepts include variables (apples & oranges), modeling functions as linear and exponential, understanding additive/multiplicative inverse. This will solidify their basic skills in Algebra and Algebra 2, so they can be successful in Precalculus and Calculus AP.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mr. Moore and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.