Reauthoring Lives, Reauthoring Community: Permaculture and School Change in Urban Schools

• In Event: Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: Academic Success, Peer Networks, and African American Youth in Schools

Abstract

The principles that guide permaculture can help guide the development of healthy and prosperous human communities and systems. In this paper, we will discuss our efforts to adapt core principles of permaculture to develop a multi-pronged, integrated set of programs to support African American students, their families and their teachers in order to strengthen the school’s social infrastructure. In particular, we seek to assist school communities in “re-authoring” school narratives around working with African American students and their families in order to identify and engage the resources inherent in the members of the school community in order to address specific concerns with greater effectiveness, grounded in the limitations and possibilities within the setting.

Authors

• Jeffrey L. Lewis, University of Wisconsin

• Adrienne Duke, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Amy Hilgendorf, Wisconsin Department of Children and Families