Green Schools, Thriving NeighborhoodsMIT’s Fall 2015 seminar on Ecological Urbanism focused upon highlighting and creating opportunities to connect and empower Philadelphia’s public schools, agencies, and neighborhoods. Seminar participants drew together three mutually supportive movements – green schoolyards, community schools and place-based education – to suggest powerful programs, partnerships and outcomes. Led by Professor Anne Whiston Spirn, with the assistance of Mami Hara, fourteen students from MIT, Harvard, Wellesley and Mass College of Art created a set of inter-related projects intended to amplify the impact of several concurrent opportunities to address Philadelphia’s public education crisis. Those opportunities include:
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FALL 2015 |
MAKING THE CASEFay Strongin and Amy Plovnik provide an introduction to green schoolyards, community schools and place-based education and make the case for their relevance to Philadelphia’s public education system and its neighborhoods. To suggest the potential feasibility of these approaches, Laurel Schwab and Elena Chang provide a broad description of funding and financing approaches, and the roles of various stakeholders in securing funding. |
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BUILDING PARTNERSHIPSBuilding effective partnerships is at the heart of several of the seminar participants’ projects. Expanding upon the economic and educational opportunities around school investments, Ahmed Almulla explores approaches for growing local economies through novel procurement and partnership methods. Those methods develop local resource loops between businesses, schools, students and other partners in order to achieve direct community benefits. Sasha Shyduroff explores the network of influence around Philadelphia’s public schools and approaches for advocacy within that network. Providing a means for further tapping into Philadelphia’s large pool of talent and volunteerism, Ursula August creates a means for partners and schools to find and work with one another. The further design and development of the Ursula’s suggested social network site for partnerships would be an ideal volunteer project, under the guidance of a responsible administrative body. With an eye toward achieving clear understandings between schools and partners, Brandon Robertson lays out one partnership agreement approach – among many possible other approaches – through which partners and schools may formalize agreements to work together. Catherine Baltazar reviews exemplary guidance on developing partnership initiatives to cull for those most salient to enhancing schoolyards and their community connections. |
A Model Program for Exploiting Local Resources A Website to Partner Schools and Community Members |
COMMUNICATING THE VALUEUnderstanding that communicating the value of green schools, community schools and place-based education would be a primary task in achieving enthusiasm for those approaches, three seminar members created communications projects. Alisha Pegan created concise fact sheets summarizing each of those three approaches and a fact sheet on the case for combining them to create an effective educational model. Identifying the need for a cohesive umbrella identity for an initiative undertaken by many partners, Emma Schnur provides a primer on branding and the branding process, while highlighting effective case studies. To cultivate the stewardship of green schoolyards by young schoolchildren, Gege Wang has developed a simple primer on green schoolyard landscapes. |
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CREATING A CURRICULUMTo capitalize upon the educational opportunities that both place based learning and green schoolyards offer, Xi Qui and Ahmed Almulla outline curricula for school children. Xi Qui’s project reviews a wide range of precedent curricula as well. Her curriculum is designed for grades K to 12 and Ahmed’s covers grades 6-8 and grades 9-12. |
A Model Program for a Curriculum Based on Local Resources |
FURTHER READINGThe seminar projects draw from an extensive body of work by educators and education partners from around the country – to assist with the on–going work of connecting and building the enormous talent within Philadelphia’s schools and neighborhoods. For further reading on Green Schools, Community Schools, and programs in Environmental Literacy and Place–based Education, see what the class read. |
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CASESThe class researched successful cases from around the US and the world. Click on the links below to read about lessons learned from programs in Green Schools, Community Schools, and Environmental Literacy and Place–based Education. Evergreen: National–Scale Bottom–Up Initiative in Canada Place–based Education Collaborative Netter Center for Community Partnerships, University of Pennsylvania Solar Youth: New Haven, Connecticut The Young Achievers Science and Mathematics Pilot School: Mattapan, Massachusetts Sun Community Schools: Multnomah County, Oregon Green Schools Initiative: Calmont School, Calabasas, California American School of Barcelona: Collserola Park Environmental Project Manhattan Country School, New York City |