Northgate School Garden



Here I am along with  Northgate Elementary School 3rd graders  thinning and transplanting peas.
 I retired from teaching primary grades in Seattle in 2012.  It was a great 30-year run.  I’d always put the curricula aside to do my own thing:  apple cider pressing in fall; gardening in Spring; and the overnight trip to Camp Long with eighty kids in June.  These events, I guess passions, made all the difference in staying in the teaching game.  It’s like what do you bring to the table?  Good teaching requires you to share your interests regardless of rubber stamp lesson plans.

Enough philosophy already.  After retiring, there was a huge void.  I missed the kids.  Checked out Northgate, the very school I attended, and the rest is history.  I latched on to Mrs. Kopiloff seeing we were of like minds.  So for the next nine years, less COVID break, I  volunteered as a science and gardening teacher.  As long as the science was “hands on” I’d do it and usually that took some tweaking of the lesson. In studying sound we made model ear drums out of a cup with thin rubber over the top.  We studied the components of soil to test growing environments.

Now, after hits and misses in the garden we have the best yet.  Our peas look great along with the radishes with carrots, beets, lettuce and spinach following behind.  A culminating event will be our salad party in June.


Randy Harkness

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