Our School Is Active in the Community
Patterson Park Public Charter School is active in the community. The school has two days of service each and every year.
Patterson Park Wetland Creation
Fifth grade students from the school helped create a wetland area around a natural spring in Patterson Park in spring of 2012. What was once a mud pit and nusance to dog walkers and mowers became a wetland with natve plants. It provides food and shelter for animals and filters runoff heading into the "Boat Lake". In late spring 2013, fifth graders will now help to increase the wetland area for Patterson Park.
Storm Drain Painting
On one of our service learning days (10/25/11), our sixth grade students worked with Audubon of Patterson Park to paint our storm drains. The painting on the drain reminds community members that the water goes directly to the Bay and we want to make sure we don't use it as a trash can!
CFL Bulb Recycling Center
Starting in winter of 2012, PPPCS became a community CFL bulb recycling site. A collection box sits right outside our Main Office. Bulbs are accepted from all community members. We have it advertised on our website, a listserv for Southeast Baltimore, and on all of our newsletters.
BEC Bag Handout
PPPCS hosted a Baltimore Neighborhood Energy Challenge event where Energy Challenge "Toolkits" were handed out to staff and community members in spring 2012. BEC has also handed our Energy Toolkits in our courtyard before school and during our community fair in September 2012. We are now officially an Energy Hub, one of only ten city schools that were selected in 2012-2013 school year. Community members are encouraged to sign up to be a part of the energy challenge. We accept their paperwork right here at the school!
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Garden Club Plot in Community Garden
PPPCS students work with community gardeners to maintain a plot in the Patterson Park Community Garden. Our Garden Club, which meets once a week with Serena Harris, a second grade teacher at PPPCS, helps maintain the plot. The Garden Club consists of fourth graders (2), fifth graders (2) and second graders (6).
Lantern Parade Workshops
PPPCS hosts workshops where community members create lanterns out of recycled materials. The lanterns are then marched around Patterson Park on the Saturday night before Halloween. http://www.creativealliance.org/halloweenparade
"Boat Lake" Clean-Ups
Every spring service learning day involves one of our grade levels helping to clean up the Boat Lake, located in Patterson Park. The lake unfortunately gets filled with trash, debris, and weeds through the long, cold winter. This last spring service day (April 2011) our three fifth grade classes were the ones who cleaned it up. They worked closely with Tim Almaguer, organizer from Friends of Patterson Park to do this big project.
Community Fair
On September 2012 , our school hosted a community fair for all of Patterson Park community members. Over 40 parents attended the workshop with many other communtiy members.The Community Resource Fair was an opportunity for our key partners to gather in one room together and offer resources and contact information directly to the PPPCS community. Parents and students were able to meet one on one with PPPCS partners providing afterschool programming,community events, financial services, home-buying services, healthy lifestyle
education, and much more.
education, and much more.
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Neighborhood Trash Pick-Ups
Our middle school students in April 2012 walked around streets north of Patterson Park - streets our students walk on to an from school for an actual math lesson by Greg Heid, middle school math teacher and math IST and cleaned up the trash found. They mapped out the paths that we walked on a Google maps image and then used scale and proportion to figure out how many actual miles they cleaned up. We have always spent a lot of time cleaning up the park but we realized that we see a lot of trash on the streets surrounding the park. The middle school students also used this an 8th grade fundraiser. We asked students to raise money for the amount of trash they picked up and they used this for their 8th grade field trip.
"Blooming the Block"
On our service day, April 2012, second graders decorated two liter bottles that were cut in half. They planted flowers in each of them and picked four blocks of streets of Lakewood directly in front of our school. They then put flowers on each of the steps of the rowhouses to 'Bloom the Block'!
Garden Dinner
Community Dinner and Audubon Workshop
Our Garden Club held a special PPPCS 'green' event on Thursday, March 21, 2013 at 5:30 pm. Our Garden Club prepared various salads based on their nutrition
education curriculum, and Audubon presented about urban gardens and the role they have in attracting and feeding migrating wildlife. We had all of our Garden Club participants and seven other families.
Our Garden Club held a special PPPCS 'green' event on Thursday, March 21, 2013 at 5:30 pm. Our Garden Club prepared various salads based on their nutrition
education curriculum, and Audubon presented about urban gardens and the role they have in attracting and feeding migrating wildlife. We had all of our Garden Club participants and seven other families.
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Service Days
Twice a year, once in the fall and once in the spring, every one of our students and teachers participate in a service learning project for the day. All of our projects involve the community and we do our very best to enrich the community around us. Some service projects include: cleaning up the Boat Lake, picking up trash, making recycling signs, painting storm drains and many more. Our teachers use the day as a teaching enrichment activity. Teachers, along with student input, start with lessons and then move to the actual application. Our students really look forward to these days!
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Banner Neighborhood Gardens and Library Square Clean Up
On our fall service day,October 25, 2011, our 7th grade classes took turns cleaning up the Library Square and working in the Banner Neighborhood Gardens. The Banner Neighborhood is a non-profit organization that has proceeded to take over vacant lots in the surrounding area of Patterson Park. They then plant flower gardens. Our seventh graders were helping weeding for the service day. The Library Square is a park land that surrounds the Enoch Pratt Library at Patterson Park. The relationship with the library is a very postive one for our school. We go on walking field trips to the library and are able to get library cards for our students. Each year, we host the children's librarian to talk about their summer reading program. One way we give back is to help maintain the square by picking up trash.