SHS juniors and seniors taking Human Development with health teacher Jaime Dwyer enjoy a hands-on approach to learning about child development and family relationships. The Flower Pots and Family Project prompts students to ask two significant questions: What makes a family strong, and what breaks a family apart?
At the beginning of the project, each student is given an empty pot and markers. Students are instructed to write multiple ways a family could break apart or grow apart.
Later, students drop their pots, breaking them into multiple pieces. Next, students take the broken pieces and tape the pot back together. On each piece of tape, they write ways a family can move past their problems and grow closer.
At the end of the course, students can plant seeds in their pots and take them home.
One of the main goals of the Flower Pots and Family Project is to learn more about children’s developmental stages and how family structures can impact them. By highlighting relationships and how children develop within a family, this activity helps students understand, recognize, and realize that families can struggle and break apart. Still, families can grow together and repair their relationships in many ways.
Dwyer stated, “It just kind of shows that things happen, experiences happen. Sometimes they’re good–sometimes they’re bad, but we all have skills or the skills necessary in order to get through and make the family strong again.”
SHS senior Nora Gosnell, who completed the Flower Pots and Family Project during Quarter 1, remarked, “It represents how many problems there could be in a relationship and how many ways there are to fix them. It showed that there is always a solution.” Gosnell added, “I thought it was a very creative way to teach us about relationships and family dynamics.”