Andrew Jackson School

We are engaged in a multi-staged project to develop an innovative "green" curriculum that will not only be a vehicle for academic excellence for our school, but a low-cost model for other under-resourced public schools in Philadelphia. This garden will be a resource for hands-on learning that will engage and inspire our students to master testable skills in order to engage with deeper learning. Our garden will be a special place, where our students will grow plants they can eat. They will learn why those plants grow and how to measure that growth, what cultures originally domesticated those plants, why they should eat them, and so much more. This grant would provide a critical source of funding and give us a chance to develop a model for achieving academic excellence that even schools as poorly funded as ours can afford.