Family and School Partnerships Build Family School Pride

By Alicia Dorsey

How do you foster pride? Education as we know starts at home, I am a firm believer in creating life long learning environments in and outside of my home. The time that my family and community members spend on various trips and projects allow us to bond and take pride in our work and relationships.

For instance, I have always wanted to learn how to garden. Thanks to a great partnership with The City of Philadelphia, East Park Revitalization, Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, Strawberry Mansion High School, Strawberry Mansion N.A.C. and the Strawberry Mansion community, we have a great partnership learning how to grow our own food. Not only are we learning to grow our own food but we are learning about our neighbors and discussing issues and concerns in our community and how we can as a community address the various issues and concerns. I am very proud to be building these relationships and love growing my health.

The partnership has strengthened our relationships with the city and various organizations. We are getting to know and trust each other. We the community gardeners, depend on Nicole Sugerman from East Park Revitalization to give us direction every tuesday from 3-7pm. Nicole depends on us the community to maintain our gardens and participate in the various workshops that  offer gardening tips. There are  individual family plots and several community plots. We share the food we grow with each other and those who are not gardening. Once a month we market some of our produce to the community and sell out every time. Our efforts gets media attention often and the demand for individual family plots is hard to fill. Gardening has developed our senses in so many ways and i love the connections that i have made with my gardening family.

Would you like to build some pride with your family and school? Contact your parent liaisons and ask how can you be part of the educational community? Let them know what you have to offer and what your family needs may be. Here is a link that you may want to share with your school on some ways to build family school pride: School Pride at Urban Schools.