TLDR: Invite your seniors to a high school faculty meeting – maybe on Earth Day. Hold a fishbowl conversation, where you ask them about how your school has supported their growth as environmental leaders – and how you could do better. Then, work in teams of students and staff to fill big sheets of butcher paper, one for each grade – creating a map of the specific ways your school...
Voices & Stories
Joel Tolman July 17, 2025
Wearing bright yellow safety vests, Aurelio, Claire, and Adriana lead their classmates across the narrow bridge that connects Common Ground High School's campus to the rest of the West Rock neighborhood. Hugging the guardrail, they are equipped with the tools they've assembled for the day's work: chalk, garbage pickers and bags, and homemade traffic signs sporting messages like "...
by Larry Dome, Evan Green, Shannon Raider Ginsberg, Sarah Tracy-Wanck, and Joel Tolman This blog post was originally written as part of a potential book project on urban farming and STEM learning, but never published. In 2024, it was brought back to life and published at teachcity.org with support from a USDA NIFA grant. Explore the full toolkit on urban farming and math learning here....
Joel Tolman November 3, 2024
Teaching Our Cities -- a project of Common Ground High School, Urban Farm & Environmental Education Center -- is seeking applications from high schools and nonprofit environment organizations interested in joining in a year-long collaborative effort. The goal: To develop, test, improve and share resources and tools that will help young people across New England (and beyond) build...
Joel Tolman September 28, 2024
Opening Photo: Isonnette, Glow, Joel, Jessica, and Aiden wade out to remove cattails that are out-competing other wetland species. This past Friday, two dozen Common Ground students showed up after school to care for the educational wetland on our campus. Four teachers were on hand to help, but Isonnette O’Brien – who last year as a 10th grader founded our Wetland Crew – was the natural...
Robyn Stewart | Joel Tolman May 30, 2022
What if urban public schools could mobilize their cities and schoolyards as classrooms – helping city students connect to their urban environments, master high academic standards, and grow into environmental stewards? Teaching our Cities and Schoolyards was a two-year project that aimed to do just that, with support from the EPA’s Environmental Education Grant Program. Two Common Ground...