Between 2022 and 2024, three public schools in New Haven – Common Ground, Brennan Rogers and Elm City Montessori – found new and deeper ways to learn about and steward our urban environment. Our work was fueled by support from the Environmental Protection Agency, who entrusted the New Haven Ecology Project – the community nonprofit that operates Common Ground High School – with $100,000 in funding through their Environmental Education Grant Program. Our work was also supported by two community organizations – Gather New Haven and Emerge CT – who helped us build richer outdoor classrooms and connect us with learning opportunities beyond our school grounds. All three schools and both community partners benefitted from $5,000 mini-grants – a core feature of the EPA’s environmental education grant program, and a meaningful investment in both collaboration and richer outdoor classrooms. At each of our three schools, EPA support also made it possible for an experienced environmental educator from the New Haven Ecology Project team to facilitate a full day of outdoor learning each week.
Lots of meaningful work happened at each of our three schools. We built and expanded gardens and outdoor classrooms. In all, 505 elementary students and 275 high schoolers engaged in meaningful outdoor learning and stewardship opportunities. For instance, these students designed and installed outdoor interpretive exhibits, freed nearly 100 canopy trees from invasive vines, and operated compost systems (at Common Ground, for instance, they helped divert more than 40,000 pounds of organic waste from landfills and incineration).
But some of the richest learning and stewardship happened when our three school communities found ways to connect with each other and work together. That’s the focus of this practice profile: what is possible when urban public schools come together around the urban environment they share.
Environment
Our three schools share a place. We sit at the base of West Rock Ridge State Park, one of Connecticut’s largest state parks, and one of the only ones connected to an urban area. Students can hike from Common Ground and Elm City Montessori, explore unique microclimates and the species diversity they make possible, study how urban forests are adapting or struggling in the face of climate change, hike to the summit and see their entire city.
Likewise, our schools share a neighborhood, also called West Rock. West Rock is home to incredible human and environmental resources – a state university with a strong focus on sustainability and social justice, a community health center, large areas of forest. We also share environmental challenges. The capped landfill and active transfer station for the neighboring town of Hamden– the site of a former natural area turned quarry turned dump – has its entrance in our New Haven neighborhood. The city’s largest concentration of public housing is in New Haven, and neighborhood stakeholders have had to fight for access to a health center, workable public transit, a corner store, and other critical infrastructure. Ironically, our three schools aren’t connected by sidewalk – though that too is changing, thanks to advocacy by students and neighbors.
And, our three schools share an urban waterway. Wintergreen Brook flows by the back door of Brennan Rogers School. It passes just across the street from Common Ground, where students have created the Wintergreen Brook Urban Oasis. It meets up with the main branch of the West River just around the corner from Elm City Montessori, before flowing into New Haven Harbor and Long Island Sound. Wintergreen Brook and the West River are, like our neighborhood, a confluence of opportunities and challenges: site of persistent illegal dumping and perennial cleanup efforts, impaired by high levels of e coli and fecal coliform, a source of resiliency and potential flooding during extreme weather events, an asset and source of peace for residents, part of a state-designated greenway with lots of potential but limited access.
Expectations
Our students can – and have – deepened their understanding and grown their skills through experiences together in this place.
Exhibition
With EPA support, our three schools have been able to grow different ways of working together. Here are some specific models for school-to-school collaboration that we’ve tried over the last two years:
Community partner fairs: In each of the last two Septembers, Common Ground has hosted more than two dozen local organizations
School-wide community service days: Twice each year, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and the final school day before April break, all Common Ground students take on community service projects. They serve with their guidance groups – the 10-15 students they meet and build relationships with daily over the course of their 4 years of high school. Since 9th graders are just getting to know our campus, and their curriculum focuses they usually take on projects on our site and urban farm: for instance, helping to install student-designed interpretive exhibits along Wintergreen Brook, or helping to create a new gathering circle in our outdoor classroom. Tenth graders head out into the larger community – for instance, they helped remove garbage and improve trails at Pond Lily and Long Wharf Nature Preserve, working with our partners at the . By the time they are juniors and seniors, many guidance groups are drawn to work with younger students – and given that they’re just a short walk away, students at Elm City Montessori and Brennan Rogers are their natural partners.
Educator exchanges: Educators join in a larger community of practice.