Tony Hillery was a limousine driver for celebrities a few years back. When business slowed, he had an inspiration: Why not teach children to raise food? He founded a program called “Harlem Grown,” where children learn that they can make their own compost and grow their own vegetables and certain fruits. Hillery has inspired many others with his devotion to children, to healthful food, and to learning what will be a lifelong skill.
Watch the video in this post.
Want to learn more? Here is the website for Harlem Grown: From Junk Food to Healthy Food.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Great story and a video worth watching.
But if the Koch brothers discovered shale oil under that garden, they’d do all they could to move in and take it over and start fracking.
The Walton family might build a Walmart there and bankrupt all the small mom and pop business that line the local streets. All the jobs the Waltons would create would pay poverty wages.
Eli Broad would bulldoze the garden and build a corporate Charter school there that would turn away the most difficult kids to teach from the public school across the street and only keep those that do well on standardized tests, and we’d never hear about what Broad did because he’d probably buy the NY Times or bribe it with ads and make sure the story never appeared.
David Coleman and Pearson would require a passing score on one of their tests for any child to be allowed inside the garden and the cut score would be set at 99% so only 1% would pass. Pearson would then charge a $12 a month fee to the kids that were in the 1%.
What would Michelle Rhee do—ride in on her broom stick and cherry pick all the seeds the kids planted so nothing grows?
Eva Moskowitz would bus all her kids and their parents to the state capital to lobby for her to be made the CEO of the garden and then she would pay herself $500k annually in addition to the $500k she pays herself as the CEO of the Seduces Academy Charter Schools.
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Excellent! Another teacher / farmer that supports teaching urban kids to grow is Will Allen http://www.growingpower.org
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This type of teaching was common pre-NCLB; now the emphasis in the early grades is skill and drill, although there may be a few remnants of children learning from the real world. My ESL students from central America and Mexico loved to plant as they were the real leaders in this activity. They taught the Americans what to do, and it helped build their self esteem.
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And my students in Barranquilla Colombia taught each other along with help from the craftsmen in the neighborhood. http://www.funprosefam.com Sorry, in Spanish but the pictures tell all
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For results in Colombia pay special attention to the last picture on the bottom at http://www.funprosefam.com ( And the donate button works 🙂
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Cool.
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Great work! This should be done everywhere. Will Allen is a pioneer in the urban gardening movement and wrote The Good Food Revolution, a wonderful text for students. At the end of each chapter is a lesson about the need to keep “our soil” nurtured–i.e., our children. He also received a MacArthur award for his work.
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And Will was a partner in my school in Milwaukee and wrote the forward to my book. He is wonderful! http://www.growingpower.org
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I know I am probably being irritating but a few minutes into this video is Will talking to my kids http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2014/01/get-out-of-my-classroom-and-dont-come.html
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And one more thing if Diane will allow, here is what is happening in English http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2014/12/fundacion-prosefam.html
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