Monk Botanical Gardens’ Education & Events Manager, Elise Schuler, recently spent three days at the American Public Gardens Association Education Symposium hosted at the Huntsville Botanical Garden in Alabama. Symposia are a chance for gardens staff to meet each other, share ideas, successes and failures, and inspire one another! One theme of the symposium was STEM in the garden, which is a critical component of Monk Gardens’ education programming.

Monk Gardens is a great hands-on learning destination, and Monk Gardens’ education staff has been striving to make connections with local schools and educators to create learning opportunities in the Gardens. The Gardens’ educational field trips already do connect to the standards of learning in the classroom. Still, coming back from the symposium, Elise has even more ideas to improve our current offerings, including new ideas for natural water filtration models, student-friendly microscopes, new resources for including grade-level appropriate non-fiction reading into programming, and so many other great ways for incorporating literacy and STEM into programming.

It can be easy to fall into a bit of a rut where it is hard to get creative and excited about updating programming, but the education symposium was invigorating, and Elise can’t wait to share all she’s learned with the rest of the Gardens staff and the incoming summer staff.

We hope you attend an event or education program this summer, and you might even participate in some new or improved experiences inspired by Elise’s time at the education symposium!