Park School

Arctic Partnership
The Park School’s Arctic partnership is dedicated to monitoring the permafrost in Hudson Bay Lowlands and its response to climate change. In addition to conducting field research, the partnership schools discuss social justice issues and policy implications for those living in the North. Institutions and organizations involved in the partnership include Kelvin High School,, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Junior Rangers, Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, Parks Canada, Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, and the University of Manitoba Biology Department, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

The goal of this partnership is to continue exploring the Churchill region as a unified team of three distinct groups: aboriginal students and teachers, Winnipeg students and teachers, and Park students and teachers. Together they are gathering data and solving problems related to one of the most important issues in the North, climate change.  You can read about the students’ experiences on their blog here.

Civil Rights Trip
Students from the partnership schools of City College High School, City Neighbors Charter School, and The Park School of Baltimore travel together on a Civil Rights trip to learn an important part of American history together and from one another.  For seven days, the students travel and live together, learning to appreciate the many different needs and habits of one another while also learning to imagine themselves as activists and to be empathetic to other perspectives.  While on this trip, the students also reflect and consider current issues in Baltimore and how they themselves can affect change and break down stereotypes about one another.  Through this process, the students learn about each other’s’ schools and make new friends across racial/ethnic/religious/economic and geographical lines.

Activities include:

Collaborative student meetings to prepare for the trip
Fundraising activities to support the trip
Meeting Movement leader, Congressman John Lewis in Washington, DC
Meeting other activists from the Movement
Spending a week together travelling throughout the South visiting sites important to the Civil Rights Movement
Presentation to families and funders after our return
Follow-up meetings to identify ways students can become activists in our communities

Build-a Block, Park Habitat
Park has partnered with Habit for Humanity of the Chesapeake for more than thirteen years. Over that time, Park came to recognize that partnering with other local schools would exponentially widen their impact on the Baltimore community.  They, therefore, embarked on a new endeavor, Build-A-Block, a coalition of Baltimore area public, private and parochial schools. Eighteen schools involved in the coalition: (Park School, Friends School, Baltimore City College High School, Bryn Mawr, Calvert Hall College High School, Carver Vocational-Technical High School, Dulaney High School, Edmondson-Westside High School, Friends School, Gilman School, Hereford High School, Jemicy School, McDonogh School, Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School, Mt. St. Joseph High School, and Roland Park Country School) and Park Habitat mentors and assists the partnering schools in their efforts to create their own thriving Habitat programs. Together the Build-a-Block coalition works to build a community of modest income homeowners, one block at a time.

Park Habitat also partners with Tench Tilghman, a  K-8 school in the McElderry community in East Baltimore – a neighborhood where Park Habitat has built six homes for Habitat homeowners.  Through this partnership, Park Habitat has constructed a community/school garden and a school store which is supported with donations and volunteers for the annual holiday shopping party.  At this party, students are encouraged to make purchases with reward vouchers earned for attendance, excelling, good behavior, etc.

Park Habitat also provides marketing support and handles all financial matters for a new initiative called Carpentry for a Cause. Students from Carver Vocational-Technical High School, Edmondson-Westside School, and Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School create finished wooden products in their carpentry class. The items are then sold by Build-A-Block schools, with the proceeds benefiting Habitat.

Middle Grades Partnership

Middle Grades Partnership brings together independent and public schools to provide learning opportunities for Baltimore City public middle school students. Park’s partner: The Afya Public Charter School of Baltimore City. For four weeks during the summer students take classes in math, language arts, Spanish, and service. They also swim, canoe, play sports, take part in Park’s Appalachian Challenge, and go on field trips. During the school year, students and teachers from both Park and Afya meet on Saturday mornings approximately six times taking field trips to nature centers, colleges, and more.

The goals of this program include broadening Park's awareness and involvement with our larger community, and serving the needs of students who are often greatly disaffected by a summer learning achievement gap.

To read more about Middle Grades Partnership, please click here.

Wolfe Street Academy
Park School and Wolfe Street Academy have undertaken a partnership to jointly participate in the Destination Imagination program. The program encourages teams of learners to have fun, take risks, focus and frame challenges while incorporating STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), the arts and service learning. Fifth graders from each school make up a Destination Imagination team that will be competing in an annual regional tournament.

The goal of this partnership is to undertake a challenging task together that allows students from different backgrounds and experiences to get to know each other and to learn to appreciate each other’s talents and abilities to contribute.

Alianaza Latina en Acción
Alianza Latina en Accion (ALA) is a group of students and faculty in the upper school at Park School interested in reaching out to the Latino community in Baltimore city.  Working with Wolfe Street Academy students during their extended day program, Park students visit the school once a week on Tuesdays from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m.  Park students are assigned different activities from playground supervision, to assisting classroom teachers in reading and writing, to helping with art projects, or helping serve dinner at the cafeteria.  They also participate in their Day of the Dead community night and Wolfest during their spring festival.