The school is a charter school, K-8, opened last year (though the building had been a school for at least 50 years). They apparently have a second, smaller campus now, with 45 students, but I didn't see that one. Those are the basics.
The not-so-basics is that the majority of the school's lesson plans are based around food and gardening, with an emphasis on outdoor activities and classes. It really brought me back to my own experiences and memories of childhood at a New Orleans public school. By far, my most vivid memories are from lunchtime (not recess), field trips, and when we got to have class outside. (Also, one time that I stacked some books for my teacher really efficiently, but that doesn't apply here.) All of those things are all day every day at this school! If they can really manage to work in a regular curriculum on top of it, these kids are definitely going to be much more engaged than the average schoolchild.
Further thoughts that my visit engendered as photo captions below:
Most of the gardens are of edible foods. This is the herb garden, which was the first thing I saw upon entering. Apparently during the first year, before they were able to get much of the land workable, the kids asked if they could just start some raised gardens, and this was one of the pods that were completely student-initiated. That giant palm-looking plant in the back is lemongrass! My parents have one at their house, and they'd begun to doubt that lemongrass really got that big.
During the tour, which was mainly outside of the building, she mentioned that while there is tons of rennovations to be done inside and out, the priority for the school is rennovating the outside of the building first. First, obviously, because of the focus of the school on gardening. But before taking this course, I still would have found the painted external walls (like above) a little bit superficial. Now I recognize, and so does the school, how important the veneer is. The window frames are crumbling away, and the panes are nearly opaque with dust. But it's not depressing when all around it is a green and vibrant garden.
Another thought I had as I relived some of my own schooldays--how many recess playgrounds are just blacktop? Like melts-in-the-summer, burns-your-feet-through-your-rubber-soles blacktop? My sense is most urban ones anyway. How will kids ever appreciate unpaved earth if that's all they know, if that chemical tar smell is associated with the fun of recess? An ESY summer project was to replace the blacktop section with a brick courtyard, with spots for shade trees throughout. Again, even though I hadn't seen the original blacktop, I was amazed at how drastically the renovation must have improved the look and feel of the area.
My mom, who lives in the neighborhood, even noted how spruced up the neighborhood around had begun to look. Whereas most people don't really want to live near a school, this one seems to be a potential central point for the surrounding community.
They have plans to involved the surrounding community more. This open garden I attended was the first, but it will become a monthly tradition. They will also eventually participate in a nearby farmer's market with some of the kids. Since it's a charter school, anyone can attend it, but as they are getting better established, more kids from the nearby area have begun to attend this year.
Hmm...that photo ended up looking more like a prison yard than I intended. But I wanted to show a volunteer working in the garden alongside how urban the surrounding area is. During the tour, our guide said 98% of the students lived under the poverty line(!).
This is a vegetable garden. The guide pointed out that one grade planted it and the next class had to carry it out. This teaches an important lesson in patience and long-term investment in a project. But students would also learn the lesson that there is value in creating something even if you yourself can't use it. They in turn probably inherit projects that the class ahead of them started.
To me, the garden of plants not edible (to humans, anyway) has clear implications in teaching about ecology. And by extension, using Capra's analogy, communities. They can learn that pragmatism, with its focus on results and actions, does not have to be a focus on immediate results. There is both an aesthetic and critical importance to having certain insects in a garden.
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Lastly, although I didn't get a picture to illustrate it, my favorite example of one of the community-building tools was for consensus. The faculty does aim to involve the kids in all aspects of the decision making, and while consensus would be particularly hard in a K-8 setting, there is at least some attempt at it. The scarecrow-making process tried to acommodate everyone's preferences. That's how they ended up with a policeman-scarecrow (with cheetah legs and a panther tail), and a soldier-scarecrow (holding a child, and with a clown's head). Scary...
3 comments:
Edibile Estates is a project to turn front lawns into gardens. A project is getting underway in Austin.
Question: Green movement is current popular focus. Does it have enough force and momentum to produce 'spill-over' to others areas and issues? In effect, is it creating new 'community structues' -- patterns and processes of interaction -- that might be used to advance other areas of development?
Yes--I really wanted to get my condo to do the Edible Estates, but there were some restrictions I didn't think would work for us. For one thing, not having much land, and not having it be particularly visible.
Is this Ken?
There definitely has been a resurgence of green CBOs, definitely helped by the near-trendy green movement. I think there are aspects of the movement that encompass larger social issues (for instance, the concept of "environmental racism" touches on one overlap), and that would be where some bleedover occurs. However, whether the green movement would have something to offer these areas is your real question. I think the movement itself is too broad to pin down that way. Certainly, most of the ideas come from grassroots organiziations, which themselves are just as likely to take from the theory of community building as to add to it. Perhaps one universally applicable use of having a large number of similarly-goaled CBOs is that experimental quality--with fewer variables, it might be easier to examine why some groups are more sustainable than others.
I think the way the green movement at the ESY, and also in community gardens or farmers' markets, is coupled with food in a way that gives it more universal appeal, making it a potential seed for further community interaction. As for whether the green movement on its own would have such potential I do feel the answer is yes, but I'd have to think about it to figure out the details.
When I was an active member of the local Green party, we did not have a way to focus our energy enough to attract additional people, leading to sustainability. There were only a few people who met on a regular basis to discuss the ten key values of the Green party and how to apply this to Austin.
We did make some efforts at community building - one of the most important steps was to establish a Green house - a place for our gatherings. Those of us who were a part of the group did not have experience in grassroots organizing and sharing our message.
We lacked the ability to be self-generating network.
There still is a small Green party in town, but it has not achieved what I had envisioned. However, as Carrie mentioned, many of the important values of the Green party are embodied in a variety of organizations.
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