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.
Reflection #2: Observation and Inference – October 14, 2025 – We’ve encountered a lot of changes this semester—as we have every semester! In this reflection, think about how your plans began, how they have changed, and where you hope to see your project develop. What are you enjoying? What are you realizing you don’t like? Where do you see these experiences informing how you do research/work moving forward?
At the beginning of the semester, the plans for my portion of the group project consisted of creating lesson plans and education aspects for the students at JJKFAN in support of their new outside facility. I was mostly focusing on the soil and surrounding flora and fauna in an effort to educate them on their local environments when it came to what those ecosystems were, how they’ve helped humans, and how we can help them. However, since we were no longer able to work with the students of JJKFAN, the plan pivoted. From now and moving forward, we’ll be directly helping JJKFAN to set up learning materials surrounding the area that they plan to set up the outside activities at. This will include informative plaques, study stands, and possibly more along the path that the students and other members of JJKFAN will be walking. I hope to also see the project develop into identifying the different natural flora surrounding the area that’s attracting wild animals. During our site visit, they mentioned that they were beginning to see many new animals and small rodents coming to the site and they wanted to know what was attracting them there so that they could help the ecosystem and growing community to flourish. I hope to be able to help them on that front as well. I also hope to be able to see how this project grows in the future and the people that it will continue to educate and impact as time goes on. I’m enjoying being able to work with the group and with JJKFAN to help educate others and give them a place to give back to their local ecosystems and make way for new human-nature relationships to form. I don’t think I’m realizing anything that I’m not liking just yet. For the most part, I’m enjoying what I am able to do and the good that I hope this project brings to the community within and outside of JJKFAN.
These experiences with the site visits and helping JJKFAN will impact how I do research and work moving forward in a positive way because I know what I will have to do to go out onto a site and really search for the root of a wicked problem (if there is one) and also do my best to provide solutions(s) to the best of my ability. I hope that in the future when I’m working in research groups that this experience will help me continue to help people, their communities, as well as their surrounding ecosystems. Within my career, I am going to be helping people advocate for what they need and educating those who aren’t in the same scenarios as the people I am trying to help. This experience is giving me the exposure I need to get the education part of that goal and learn what it means to help others become more aware of the triumphs and struggles that surround them in their very own biosphere that they probably don’t even know about.
Reflection #3: Self-Assessment – October 21, 2025 – You’ve completed a few site visits/Teams meetings. Hopefully, you are starting to understand your partners better, building trust, engaging in the work, and learning from your mistakes. Consider your self-presentation during your visits. Have you been confident, nervous, open to ideas, quick to judge? How have your behaviors influenced the interactions you had? What do you think you are doing well? What could you do better? Give examples and tell stories.
When it comes to the site visits and Teams meetings, I feel like I’ve presented myself both confidently and as more reserved depending on the scenario. During the Teams meetings, I felt as though I was the main ‘advocate’ for the group. I had most of what myself and the team wanted to do organized and listed for everyone to see so I was one of the best people to communicate how we were all feeling to JJKFAN and Heartlands. I was therefore more confident in what I was saying and doing as I had the knowledge of the group backing what I was saying. During the in-person visit, I felt that I was more reserved because at that point, while I knew what I wanted to do with my portion and how that would help with JJKFAN’s visit I didn’t 100% know what everyone else in the group was planning/what they wanted to do so I mainly kept quiet and spoke up when it was surrounding my portion of the project. In that scenario, I felt as if that was more helpful to the group to let someone else lead since I wasn’t fully aware of everyone’s preferences. I feel that these behaviors have influenced the interactions I’ve had with JJKFAN because it shows them that while I am able to take charge and advocate strongly for my group, I am also able to back down when I feel it’s necessary. It has also helped me further understand what it is that my contribution to the project is because I can get more insight through my behaviors or leading the group versus being more reserved.
Some things that I believe I’m doing well is keeping up with what I specifically am doing. In the past I feel that I have been too worried that everyone else knows what they’re doing and that left me with little time to figure out what I’m doing because I got too lost in everyone else’s work. This time though, I’ve been able to separate myself from their projects and truly immerse myself in my portion of the project which has in turn made the project more enjoyable for me because I’m doing something that I’m interested in, rather than helping other people with what they’re interested in. On the other hand, there are still things that I could do better on. One of those things would be to break up the project into smaller, more manageable parts. I feel that at many points when working through this project I have tried to do something really big in a small amount of time. While it’s good to know what the big picture is and be able to visualize the final result, getting to that final result isn’t something that can be done in just one or two days. Going forward, splitting up the work into smaller pieces that I can work on day-to-day would definitely help me in the long run when trying to get to that final result.