Building a Community School * (United States)
Offered by The Children's Aid Society, this complete guide to establishing a community-based school (or modifying an existing one) begins with general principles of community education and builds from there. It outlines the importance of partnerships, how to plan and pay for a community school, and the outcomes which should result. This is an American resource, but many parts will be informative and helpful for a Canadian audience as well. Illustrated with case studies and a directory of more useful resources at the back. This is a must-see.

* (note: The Children's Aid society is the author of this resource; the Coalition for Community Schools provides it on their website as a "partner publication.")

A Guide to Creating Natural School Grounds (Canada)
Evergreen Canada believes that planting a garden at neighbourhood schools is a great way to build community. This online guide gives you complete instructions for planting a community garden at your school. It tells you how to go about building a team to work on it, deciding what you want at the site, how to design a garden that meets the community's goals, and how to involve as many people as possible. This is a very helpful resource from Evergreen Canada, an organization that has been bringing communities, schools, and the environment together for years.

Click on " Teacher's Corner " at the top of the Learning Grounds page for lesson plans, helpful suggestions, and a bibliography with more resources for teachers.

Service Learning Toolbox (United States)
This collection of worksheets and checklists from the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory will help teachers plan and evaluate service-learning projects. The step-by-step process outlines how to identify needs in the school and the community, choose the right activities for students, and evaluate success afterwards. Again, this is targeted at an American audience, but will be useful to Canadian educators.

Using Public Schools as Community-Development Tools (United States)
The Neighbourworks Network completed this study along with the Joint Centre for Housing Studies at Harvard University. It's a little more theoretical than the previous resources, but it's still very useful. It explains how developers can have an impact on community engagement and the quality of schools by joining with community organizations, students, and parents. It also discusses how to make schools part of a more comprehensive development plan.

Have we missed something? Know a great resource we should include here? Email us at tamarack@tamarackcommunity.ca

Back to top.