On most weekdays, Tariem Burroughs takes his first grader to school on the Route 21 bus, so his husband, Nick, gets their son dressed and ready. Nick manages the moods of the six-year-old, sure, but it’s Burroughs who deals with the piece of the morning puzzle that’s both unpredictable and beyond the family’s control: SEPTA.
MoreOn April 15 the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education announced that it had parted ways with executive director Michael Weilbacher. Reached by Grid for comment, Weilbacher, who had run the organization since 2011, responded by email with a statement. “I am so proud of what the Schuylkill Center’s staff accomplished over the last 12 years
MoreFor residents of West Philadelphia, spring is a season for the senses. As trees and flowers break into full bloom, some of the city’s greenest neighborhoods reach their most beautiful state. The air feels fresh, the sun seems brighter than ever, and the community is rejuvenated. But there’s an unwelcome companion that also emerges at
MoreThe Philly Children’s Movement (PCM), which promotes child-centered activism and social-justice campaigns, including marches, demonstrations and workshops, has further heightened social consciousness through its Radical Little Library, a free neighborhood book exchange box at 601 West Carpenter Lane, outside of the Charles W. Henry School, near the Mount Airy Weavers Way Co-op. “We stock the
MoreIn his classroom at Lankenau High School, veteran teacher Matthew VanKouwenberg points out to his students the connection between average daily temperatures across Philadelphia and tree canopies, noting that the lack of tree cover can leave some neighborhoods — often poor, often majority-minority — overheated in summer. VanKouwenberg, who teaches chemistry and environmental science at
MoreThis spring students from five Philadelphia schools will go birding thanks to funding raised by the In Color Birding Club. The club, launched during the pandemic by Upper Darby birder Jason Hall, committed to not only providing a space for adult BIPOC birders, but also offering a gateway to birding for local children. Club board
MoreBefore she started working on the green schoolyard at Henry C. Lea School in West Philadelphia, landscape architect Sara Pevaroff Schuh, principal of SALT Design Studio, encountered a group of kids who called her over after finding what they said was a spider on playground equipment. It turned out to be a half-squished worm. She
MoreDon’t give up on Philadelphia just yet. Our centuries-old city has big problems, including the legacy of lead. It’s in our paint, our pipes, our bloodstreams. When it gets in our children, it hurts their young brains’ development, negatively affecting learning and behavior. With the district-wide installation of hydration stations — filtering units that remove
MoreFatherhood, for me, has been a course in community building and reclaiming collective cultural memory. As the son of a social worker and a Vietnam veteran (working with jazz musicians in Brooklyn post-war), I prayed for a daughter named Coltrane so that my parents would see that I understood the lessons that they taught through
More“The only thing you absolutely have to know,” as Albert Einstein once said, “is the location of the library.” When it comes to Philadelphia’s public schools, Einstein’s dictum leaves most students hamstrung, as the district’s number of librarians has declined sharply in recent decades. “In 1991, the School District of Philadelphia had 176 paid librarians,”
MoreThe FBI kept Hakim’s Bookstore, 210 S. 52nd Street, under surveillance for some time, sniffing around for subversion, says Yvonne Blake, 70. Daughter of Dawud Hakim, the store’s late founder, Blake recounts how her father had done the unthinkable in 1959 by opening an independent Black bookstore, five years before segregation would be outlawed in
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