AP in Haiti – Day Two: More Questions

How do you show love for a community?  Well in the community of Camp Marie it means helping clear a field.

The field in question is a demonstration plot that will be used to help farmers teach farmers how to sustainably farm the land available to them in the community.  The demonstration plot will be the agricultural lab where these practices will be practiced, refined, and disseminated to the rest of the community. For example a common practice may be to burn the pile at the forefront of the picture. Instead farmers will create mulch from that pile to use in the plot as a way to keep moisture in the soil, thus reducing irrigation needs. The hope is that these practices will increase the production of the Camp Marie farmers that will not only meet the nutritional needs of the community but also provide opportunities to sell any excess produce to provide economic stimulus to the community. The collaboration around this project will hopefully facilitate increased communication amongst farmers in order to promote diversity in what is planted and enhanced strategies for selling their excess produce.  What excited me about all of this is there is a lot of math in this plan!  How can this plan that the leadership of Camp Marie with the assistance of 410 Bridge be used as a context for teaching math to the children of Camp Marie?  How can area models be used to decide how to plant the demonstration plot? How can proportional reasoning be used to teach the ideas around crop yields? How can the exponential pattern be used to model what it would mean for farmers to teach farmers these agricultural processes? How can the collaboration needed amongst farmers be modeled in the classroom through the use of collaborative groups?

More questions but more fun to think about…