Monica Knuppe is a 7th and 8th grade teacher at Red Shirt School on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Hermosa, South Dakota. She will use her $1,280 grant to create the “Petunia Project,” a year-long project where students will plant seeds, monitor growth, and crossbreed the plants and collect the F1 (first generation) seeds when they start flowering, and then repeat the process. Students will learn to identify plant structures with proper terminology, conduct growth data and analysus, conduct genetic experimentation with sexual reproductio of plants, and plant them in the school planters. 

This hands-on experience with plants will give students the space raise more questions, think critically, and understand the science concepts at a much deeper level.