PhillyEarth permaculture students at the Village of Arts and Humanities stand with their teacher, Jon Hopkins (center) in the middle of their garden | photos by Jared Gruenwald By Marilyn Anthony The cob oven, hand-built from Warnock Street clay, was nearly finished when it suddenly collapsed. Jon Hopkins, Director of the PhillyEarth project thought, “Oh my
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Free Library of Philadelphia President Siobhan Reardon | photo by Jon Roemer By Marilyn Anthony In 2008, Siobhan Reardon, the first female president of the Free Library of Philadelphia, had some challenging ingredients to work with when she arrived: a 30 percent budget cut, a stalled capital campaign, pressure to close many neighborhood libraries and the astounding
MoreElementary students at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education get down in the mud during a hike | photo by Rebecca Dhondt by Justin Klugh As a child, environmental leader Mike Weilbacher can remember getting lost in the pine woods of Long Island. “That was our home,” he recalls. “We’d go off, two miles away from
MoreScott Blunk teaches Theresa Harter, a junior, how to work a loader at W.B. Saul High School in Roxborough. | Photos by Stephen Dyer
Compost expert and volunteer teacher makes educational programs possible for high school students
The compost pile at W.B. Saul High School in Roxborogh is about the size of a school bus—and that’s
Illustration by Faye Rogers.Gardening can be rife with emotional highs and lows. For the novice gardener, the hopes held by a trove of seedlings can be dashed by watching the tiny plants wither and fade, despite one’s best attempts. More seasoned gardeners may bask in the glow of pride, having achieved success with planting, potting
MoreChef Eli Collins of Pub & Kitchen describes the ingredients in his still life and how they are used in his signature dish. Image by Mike Persico.
Students learn the relationship between food and art from Philadelphia’s top chefs
As a new art teacher, it felt natural for Deva Watson, also a food runner at Zahav and
Imagine an entire weekend dedicated to teaching sustainable skills of all kinds—backyard chicken raising, beekeeping, composting, gardening, healthy cooking and home energy efficiency. The Home Grown Institute, whose inaugural conference is this March, has planned to do just this. The conference is tailored to provide attendees with the skill sets and motivation to transform their
MoreThey call themselves the Southwest Child Rebel Gardeners. They’re a group of students from George W. Pepper Middle School in Southwest Philadelphia, and their stomping ground is the Pepper Pride Garden.
MoreHow to Grow a School Garden: A Complete Guide for Parents and Teachersby Arden Bucklin-Sporer and Rachel Kathleen Pringle(Timber Press, 224 pp., $24.95, June 2010)
MoreAnalyzing the Farm Bill or discussing health and educational inequalities can make for an interesting college-level course, but when students in the Robert A. Fox Leadership Program apply their classroom learning to fieldwork in Philadelphia public schools, education comes alive.
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