Seeds for Learning – Fall Harvest
On any chilly Friday afternoon in the fall, you can find students standing behind a table piled high with carrots, radishes, squash, and flowers in front of Martin Luther King High School in Northwest Philadelphia debating the best methods of cooking okra with folks waiting for the bus. When customers ask, “Where did all this food come from?” the students proudly respond, “From our farm.” I wrote about the farm earlier this summer in the height of the season but, as the weather cools, I am beginning to consider the bigger issues we engage with on the farm. We encounter and take on many of the challenges facing urban youth today, including the rise of obesity in teens coupled with a lack of access to healthy food, the absence of project based learning opportunities that are relevant to students’ lives, few opportunities for young people to take on substantial responsibility, and inadequate preparation for the world of the twenty-first century.
At Foundations we work in three areas: school, afterschool, and the community. We are constantly searching for ways to integrate our work across the three areas; this has been an exciting challenge for our organization. I believe our farm can become a model to demonstrate the possibilities of connecting schools, afterschool, and the community to improve life outcomes for children and youth.
Our farm builds bridges among the school day, afterschool, and the community. Science teachers can’t wait to get inside our soon-to-be built greenhouse and develop project-based learning units. Afterschool, we integrate academic skills into our work as students develop a love of the natural world, and experience the value of hard work and responsibility firsthand. At our farm stand, students apply what they have learned in their math classes and gain valuable twenty first century skills including problem solving and communication as they run a small business. Community support is vital to the success of our program; without our dedicated volunteers – many of whom are master gardeners from a local church – our farm would not succeed.
Beyond these activities, there is a sense of community developing around the farm. For those of you who are familiar with Philadelphia, before Foundations assumed the management of Martin Luther King High School it was viewed as “an out-of-control, unsafe, even violent school.” Locally, King was known as a “school of last resort.” We have worked hard to change this perception, and our farm stand has been an amazing place for community members to meet King students. Without exception, our customers at the farm stand are surprised and delighted by our students. In turn, their compliments create a sense of pride in the students who work on the farm and staff the farm stand. As our first growing season draws to a close, and we prepare to build a greenhouse, I am thrilled that we are part of a larger dialogue about what it takes to truly educate students for the twenty-first century.
