Reflection #1: Initial Thoughts – September 16, 2025 – You’ve made your implementation plan and started conducting some research. What are your plans for the semester? What have you learned so far about your topic? What has surprised you? What questions still remain?
My plans for the semester mainly include helping to make the students at the JJKFAN center more educated when it comes to the importance of biodiversity and greenspaces. I really want to come up with creative lesson plans and activities for them to do and I’m also excited to be able to first-hand research the soil and native plants surrounding JJKFAN because I believe that it will be interesting to both learn and teach. While I’ll mainly be working with JJKFAN, I am also excited to work at least somewhat with Heartlands to do the same. So far on my topic, I’ve learned about the different types of trees in the JJKFAN area, a couple examples of those being apple trees and japanese trees. I’ve also learned about the types of soil that those trees need to thrive. I hope that when I go to JJKFAN and get to test the soil and get more knowledge on what’s there that I can find a way to make sure that the different types of trees are able to thrive to the best of their ability as each of them have different needs. There’s also a chance that I could incorporate that into what I’m teaching the students, maybe making a long-term activity out of that as well. It did surprise me that there was such a variety of different trees. I was more expecting there to be 2-4 different types but there are 9 different types, all needing different types of soil with different pH levels. It makes me wonder how they all got there in the first place and how they’ve survived for as long as they have, since while there are similarities between the soils they need, there are still lots of differences. That’s another question that I can continue to research so that I can educate the students. When I go to JJKFAN and I am able to ask more about the data testing and sharing, I hope that there aren’t too many obstacles when it comes to testing. If so, I hope that there’s a chance that someone else could do the testing and I could use the data to continue on with the project, even though I wouldn’t be directing getting the data myself. Otherwise, even if I’m not able to get the data at all, I could still research and see if any studies have been done in the general area (or on the trees/soil in question at all) and use those resources to estimate what could be done for JJKFAN based on what has been done in other areas. Heartlands may be better when it comes to finding those resources since they study the flora around their site. I could also see what trees/soil are in their greenspace area and what all they have done to help their environment thrive. All around, I am excited for what’s to come this semester while working with both JJKFAN and Heartlands to educate the JJKFAN students and volunteers about the importance of greenspaces and biodiversity.