Secondary School Seed Saving Curriculum
Why Incorporate Seed Saving into Curriculum?
Healthy ecosystems throughout history have relied on interactions between flora and fauna, and humans will continually be reliant on the food systems in place, which are experiencing more and more strain in the face of climate change. Seed saving in school curriculum can provide an outlet for students to see the human impact of growing your own plants from seed and create a bond to their land that promotes stewardship in the long run. Interactions with the environment can also be a needed outlet when sitting inside at a desk all school day. Seed saving can connect your curriculum to the real world from preserving biodiversity to analyzing genetic traits and characteristics of plants to adapting crops to a rapidly changing climate to breeding varieties for now and the future.
Healthy ecosystems throughout history have relied on interactions between flora and fauna, and humans will continually be reliant on the food systems in place, which are experiencing more and more strain in the face of climate change. Seed saving in school curriculum can provide an outlet for students to see the human impact of growing your own plants from seed and create a bond to their land that promotes stewardship in the long run. Interactions with the environment can also be a needed outlet when sitting inside at a desk all school day. Seed saving can connect your curriculum to the real world from preserving biodiversity to analyzing genetic traits and characteristics of plants to adapting crops to a rapidly changing climate to breeding varieties for now and the future.
Middle School
At the middle school level, teachers can begin to introduce biodiversity preservation and the necessity of pollinators. Here you can also introduce different methods of scarification and other methods of growing plants, like outside of soil
Additional Resources to extend your knowledge or incorporate into your classes:
Seed Botany
Flower Botany
Fruit Botany
Germination Testing (Created by Seed Savers Exchange) (video)
Hand-Pollinating Squash (Created by Seed Savers Exchange)
Seed Saving Biennials (Created by Seed Savers Exchange)
Recommended Readings (Created by Seeds of Diversity Canada)
High School
At the high school level curriculum you begin to introduce more independence on projects:
At the middle school level, teachers can begin to introduce biodiversity preservation and the necessity of pollinators. Here you can also introduce different methods of scarification and other methods of growing plants, like outside of soil
- First the Seed Foundation (founded by the American Seed Trade Association):
- In this middle school lesson, this provides an introduction to why many plants are the way they are today due to the gene editing that has taken place to feed a growing population in a changing climate
- The videos in this playlist begin to introduce why we need to work with the land, and the necessity of saving and planting seeds of plants that have been ecosystem engineers for so long, like cover crops
- It can also be a good time at this age to foster discussions around community engagement in seed saving in your classroom, using articles such as these as a reference: Community Seeds Library & Global Seed Savers
- Seedfolks resources - Language Arts
- Plant Breeding:
- Bean breeding project (Website with Beefy Resilient Grex bean breeding. Stopped because irrigation system not functioning since 2019!)
- Corn breeding project (Website with corn breeding. Stopped because the school irrigation system has not functioned since 2019!
- Resources on Plant Selection, Breeding & Trialing
Additional Resources to extend your knowledge or incorporate into your classes:
Seed Botany
Flower Botany
Fruit Botany
Germination Testing (Created by Seed Savers Exchange) (video)
Hand-Pollinating Squash (Created by Seed Savers Exchange)
Seed Saving Biennials (Created by Seed Savers Exchange)
Recommended Readings (Created by Seeds of Diversity Canada)
High School
At the high school level curriculum you begin to introduce more independence on projects:
- Iowa State University: This resource is a 6-part film series on the necessity of understanding our seeds and fostering a relationship with them in the long run
- Seed Library Network: At the high school level, a great way to combine 8+ prior years of school on seed saving with community outreach, is to start your very own seed library in the classroom which the community can borrow from and provide to, check out our Getting Started on a Seed Library part of the website, and discuss with your classroom how this could be implemented. Our Bookmarks page, which has great resources for seed saving in a smaller format to apply in lessons
- Resources on Plant Selection, Breeding & Trialing