Ceres Policy Research spent three years documenting the experiences of elementary school students in the Lifelab science program at Westlake Elementary School. This participatory research was conducted by Dr. Angela Irvine who was acting as a researcher, Lifelab volunteer, and Westlake mother. During the first year of this longitudinal study, Dr. Irvine completed a video portrait of Holly Willet’s first grade class as they learned about the garden.
During the next year, Dr. Irvine completed a series of short videos that were written by Megan Tsuchiguchi’s second grade class. These videos were all related to the school garden, but ranged from poems about the garden to reenactments of memorable events such as a field trip to a garden in Bonny Doon.
In the third year, Dr. Irvine completed a series of short videos that were written by Dean Silver’s third grade class. These videos are fictional accounts of imaginary events. They include an enactment of flowers coming to life, the conflict between a mad scientist and cocoa plants, the conflict between Bigfoot and some spiders, and a series of cartoons.
Contact Ceres Policy Research for a copy of the videos at the following email address: contact@cerespolicyresearch.com
