FLOW to be incorporated in a William Penn Foundation-sponsored teaching program, at the Water Works

My collaboration with the Fairmount Water Works is long and rich, and today I'm pleased to share the news that that relationship has now been extended through a fantastic new program funded by the William Penn Foundation.

The program, designed to "improve environmental education in Philadelphia middle schools and to engage new audiences in art," is fully described below. Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River, a book I've taught to the children of Project FLOW, will be an integral part of this program—a copy given to each participating student and teacher. I'll also be meeting with the teachers to conduct a writing workshop based on the book.

I am, of course, delighted.

The release about the broad program, as it appears in today's Philly.com:

Fairmount Water Works Receives More Than $500,000 from William Penn Foundation

Grants Open Up Opportunities for Watershed Education, Art and Engagement

PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A pair of grants from the William Penn Foundation will allow the Fairmount Water Works to improve environmental education in Philadelphia middle schools and engage new audiences through art.


The Foundation awarded the Fairmount Water Works $506,000 to launch a three-year Middle School Teacher Fellowship Program to develop a curriculum that integrates urban watershed education with core science and English standards for sixth through eighth grade students. It also awarded an $82,500 planning grant for the Fairmount Water Works to prototype an interactive and kinetic sculpture near the river and the Water Works’ historic building.

Middle School Fellowship Program
Fifty-four Philadelphia School District teachers will create and test lessons in their classrooms and receive monthly training, classroom support from environmental educators, curriculum specialists and experts from the Philadelphia Water Department, and funds for supplies, staff development and bus transportation for field trips. The program is based on the Fairmount Water Works’ existing program, Understanding the Urban Watershed Curriculum Guide, a framework for lessons on watershed, and water use in the context of an urban environment. More than 1,500 students will be reached in the program’s first three years.

“We’re developing this curriculum at a time when the need for high-quality environmental education is critical so students can understand the issues we face in Philadelphia, and across the United States,” said Karen Young, Director of the Fairmount Water Works. “Our goal is to help teachers increase engagement and academic achievement by integrating real-world environmental experiences, hands-on exploration and project-based learning into the classroom.”

Student teacher volunteers from Temple University’s TU Teach program, University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education and Bryn Mawr College’s Community Praxis program will also support the teachers.

Read more...

honoring the river, at the Flow Festival

We let the flowers fall gently down (bless our Schuylkill River). We watched the children chase the bubbles, sparkle their fish, play the music of the drip drum, watch the mechanical flotilla, choose a history question to answer: Do you remember a flood? Do you have an umbrella story? We watched them build a sculpture out of water drops and silkscreen a poster. And that was beautiful.

But this was beautiful, too: the way we adults quietly took it in—the thrumming of the river, the pavilion of flowers, the old-world mechanics of water power, the simple rising of the tide against a fiber texture. There we were, in a city, and what we felt was a quieting down, a simplifying, a moment for prayer.

Congratulations to Fairmount Water Works, Karen Young, Victoria Prizzia, all the artists, and the many people who came to the Flow Festival. The city at its finest. I'm stepping back from the words right now. The pictures tell the story.

Read more...

Project Flow, Teen Writers, and the Color of Life at the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center

Take a look at those faces (well, all except for the old lady in orange pants). This is the company I had the privilege of keeping earlier this day, as a guest of the Project Flow program sponsored by Karen Young and the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center. Rising ninth graders—young souls brought from schools all over the city. A medley of projects created and taught by teachers who love words, science, and art. The leadership of Ellen Freedman Schultz, the FWWIC education and outreach coordinator.

This morning, I had the chance to talk to the young people about my three Philadelphia books—all of which have pivotal scenes on the river. One, FLOW, is entirely about the river, while DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS finds its protagonists skating on its frozen skin (with calamitous results) and DR. RADWAY'S SARSAPARILLA RESOLVENT features an historic river race. But mostly we talked about rivers and transcendent language and mellow yellow fish (as well as gold ones). By way of introduction, I asked the students to reflect on the colors of their lives. Their work was so exceptional that I promised to share it here, after shedding a little tear (so did someone else in the room! twice! we caught him!).

I like nothing more than chilling with people like these young souls.

The color of my life is a pink and a blue fighting over a green. Pink wants green to be pink and the blue wants green to be gold when green just wants to be green and left alone.

— Tiara

The color of life is a red orange flame, when blue cooler yet warmer, and black when deceased.

— Rafael

The color of my life is a deep shade of blue. A cool, calm, collected blue. A quiet silent in the night blue. And sometimes a sad blue. But on some days, this blue turns as bright as an afternoon sky.

— Liam

The color of my life is magenta. It's a color that's different and vibrant but can also be very mellow. I believe that magenta can never blend in. It's a color that can and always will stick out.

— Kai

Shades of yellows, oranges, reds, pinks, and purples along with the pale blue that I recognize wherever I go. As we travel back home from any city when I say goodbye from the car window. As well as before I doze off on the plane ride home from another country.

— Olivia

The rainbow, for all the crazy emotions I feel and when and how they come out.

— Rashae

The color of life is a brilliantly bright orange that shines pure, untouched. It is like the age of the sun except with a perfect unblemished glow.

— Jake

The color of my life is a light blue. It was once a very dark blue close to black-purple. As the story of my life goes on the blue gets lighter and lighter defining the very exciting and depressing point in my life.

— Erika

The color of my life is red because it's passion. The reason why I pick red is because it is the color of my passion.

— Nafese

So the color of my life is nothing. I don't think my life has a color or will ever have one, well, not until I'm gone from this world, but my life would be what I want to make it be. If I want it to be red I'll make it red. If I want it to be blue, I'll make it blue. But until I'm on my deathbed I will never know because I didn't live it yet.

— Juan

A brief P.S. When I returned home today, I had three notes about our river. One included a link to this gorgeous new review of FLOW, a book published several years ago. My thanks to Tina Hudak of the St. Albans Lower School Lower School Library Collection, in Washington, DC.

Read more...

The river runs through us: the Schuylkill in today's Inquirer

Yesterday I promised a link to my Inquirer story about the Schuylkill River, Karen Young, and the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center.  This morning I'm happy to share that link, along with three additional Water Works photographs, here.

A happy Sunday to you all.

Read more...

Loving my river (a Philadelphia Inquirer story)

I have loved the Schuylkill River ever since I was a student at Penn with a bad case of wanderlust—walking the campus, walking beyond it, leaving and returning.  Several years ago I wrote one of my favorite books, Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River (Temple University Press), as both a prayer and a poem.  I wrote it to honor the countless many who have come together in recent years to make the river more whole. 

Among the river-loving friends I have made along the way is Karen Young. The story that appears in this weekend's Philadelphia Inquirer celebrates her achievements at the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center (FWWIC) and the future of Philadelphia, a city finally going green.

I'll post the link tomorrow (today is now tomorrow; here is the link).  I share the first two paragraphs below.  Great thanks to Avery Rome, the Inquirer Features editor who invited me and others (Karen Rile, Elizabeth Mosier, Lise Funderburg, Kelly McQuain) to think out loud in the Inquirer Currents section a few months ago.  We have loved every second of working with Avery and cheer her forward as she now moves on to new realms and dreams.

-->

Of the two rivers that carry Philadelphia’s dreams toward the sea, it is the Schuylkill that has always snagged a good chunk of my heart.  It feels personal to me—the Schuylkill’s roving through time, her baptisms and floods, her primeval sheen, her helpless submission to toxins and sludge, her muddy regrets and redemption.  The river rises and falls.  She floats us on her back and steeps.  She comes at us from the hills and carries on beyond us.  We know her, and we need her, and she is a mystery.

            When we ruin the Schuylkill we ruin ourselves.  We become, as we once were, a city with a stench, a city that festers.  We forfeit all three faces of time—the past, the present, the future.

Read more...

the sun was just right: last evening at the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center

Read more...

Envisioning the Future: The Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center Looks Forward

Next Friday evening, I'll be taking part in an event that thrills me—the jurying of a charrette designed to help shape the future of the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center.  Some nineteen storytellers—fine artists, museum designers, theatrical performers, lighting, media, and sound experts—are gathering from across the nation to participate in a conversation about this 200-year-old gem's future.  What are the continuing possibilities for a building through which the river literally runs?  How might new space be adapted to teach the thousands of people who tour the Water Works each year about where water goes, how watersheds work, and what happens when the built environment foils Nature's plans?  Who are the constituents for a treasure like this, and how might those numbers be expanded?

I've known Karen Young, the executive director of the Water Works, ever since my story of the Schuylkill, Flow, was published by Temple University Press.  I've heard, from her, about how her unique institution has gathered momentum, reaching out to more than 2,000 school children this past summer alone, and 40,000 visitors annually.  I know how dedicated she is to the life of this city, and how much vision lives within her two very lovely eyes.  This will be, in short, a terrific event.

Among those who have been invited to the charrette are designers and thinkers who have participated in the shaping of the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Franklin Institute, the Mutter Museum, the Children's Museum of Manhattan, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian, Monticello, the University of Pennsylvania, Longwood Gardens, the Smithsonian African American Museum of History and Culture, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Canadian Children's Museum, the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and Hidden City Philadelphia. 

I'm lucky to be joining the grand jury that will meet at the day's end.

Look for more on this event—here and elsewhere—soon.

Read more...