Future Gustie teachers came back to campus this fall to discover multiple new additions added to their “new” home on campus.
These new additions to Anderson Hall include an outdoor classroom located in front of the building and a beautiful garden in the back.
“We are all so excited about the building and grounds! It’s been a joy to watch them develop around us. We’re all still getting our “sea legs” with the new spaces, and that includes the outdoor spaces,” Professor in education Lisa Dembouski, said.
The students are very excited to spend time in the outdoor classroom this fall.
“I love the new outdoor classroom and garden! I think it really adds to our campus and the opportunities that a class can give us,” Sophomore and Education Department student worker, Mikayla Kendall said.
These new spaces will be used for multiple purposes which will be beneficial to current and future Gustavus faculty.
“Several of us faculty are thinking of more ways to not only utilize the spaces for our own students but also how to model their use for our teachers-to-be and THEIR use of outdoor classroom spaces. Everything is still a work in progress, but we could not be more delighted about how they’re turning out,” Dembouski said.
These new classroom spaces will provide Education students with a space to interact and collaborate with each other even more.
“The collaborative and interactive classroom spaces provided in the newly remodeled Anderson Hall enable us to model best practices in education, preparing our teacher education candidates to teach Twenty-first Century learners. It’s exciting to be able to equip our candidates to meet the needs of today’s learners,” Professor in Education Amy Vizenor said.
The colorful garden located in the back of the building isn’t just for looks.
“Elementary education students learn about phenology which is the study of how plants and animals respond to cyclical seasonal changes. These events might include: flowering, fruiting, bird migration, or animal reproduction. The garden plantings are dominated by native wildflowers, including several kinds of cone flowers, milkweeds, liatris, and paintbrush, to name just just a few. These flowers are originally native to the prairie biome of the St. Peter area,” Professor in education, Michele Koomen, said.
The new gardens provide an excellent learning opportunity because “Our education students will learn about the science of phenology by documenting the seasonal changes of the plants which is very applicable to their future elementary outdoor science teaching. In addition, the gardens are a springboard to other citizen science endeavors for our students as future teachers, such as monitoring monarchs and birds through the Monarch Larva Monitoring (University of Minnesota) project or eBird (Cornell University),” Koomen said.
The Gustavus community, especially Education students and faculty, are so grateful to have such an incredible resource and hall located right on campus.
“We are grateful to all the stakeholders involved in moving the Anderson project forward. The renovated building makes a difference,” Vizenor said.
It makes a difference not only for the Gustavus community, but the local schools in St. Peter as well.
“We are thrilled that we have a dedicated outdoor learning space and model native gardens! Research is very strong on the value of taking K-12 students outdoors for learning in science and other curricular areas, but also for releasing stress and promoting well being, including a longer attention span. We look forward to using the gardens with our Gustavus students and K-12 students from St. Peter and other local schools,” Koomen said.
The Education Department will be hosting an Affinity Group for Homecoming this year and hope to see education majors, thinking-about-it-students, and alumni and friends on Sept. 23.