Here you will find lesson plans & helpful tips for teaching an urban gardening curriculum!
Our Story
Through this Praxis placement at Parkway West, a team of Bryn Mawr and Haverford students has been working toward creating an urban garden in a currently unoccupied lot near the school. It is our hope that this will become a site of experiential learning, encouragement of better nutrition, and empowerment of student leadership within the community. We have formed two subgroups within our group; one of which is designing curriculum and co-teaching an environmental science class focusing on gardening and nutrition. Developing lesson plans throughout the week, with input and suggestions from the teacher of this class and a coordinator from the Urban Nutrition Initiative, this group spends Monday mornings at the school teaching the environmental science curriculum. The other group, which has focused on community outreach in order to garner support for the garden just recently completed a Request for Proposal through the Urban Nutrition Initiative. In attempts to earn $2,000 and support for the maintenance of this project as well as learn about the history of the land, this group has done substantial research through interviews with students, staff, administration, and members of the community involved in similar work.
Using the idea of sustainability as a frame for this project, we are facilitating community ownership of this project by working with the students in a way that helps them acknowledge their agency in this project. In order to jumpstart the project with such a framework, we had a Parkway Garden Workday on Saturday, March 31, to facilitate and foster this collaboration between Bryn Mawr/ Haverford and Parkway students.
Using the idea of sustainability as a frame for this project, we are facilitating community ownership of this project by working with the students in a way that helps them acknowledge their agency in this project. In order to jumpstart the project with such a framework, we had a Parkway Garden Workday on Saturday, March 31, to facilitate and foster this collaboration between Bryn Mawr/ Haverford and Parkway students.