Jan. 1, 2018
UAS Annual Report
Dear Friends of UAS,
We have a lot of words at Urban Adventure Squad. (Have you seen the emails we send ahead of our programs?) But it's hard to find the right ones to describe a year as exciting as our very first one as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, charitable education organization.
Apart from our restructuring, we welcomed 650 individual Squad members and held 120—yes, 120!—different program days. Our network of Squad Leaders grew to 13. Since launching our fundraising drive on Giving Tuesday (Nov. 28), we have raised nearly $2000 in individual donations. Our subscriber list for the UAS Update--this e-newsletter--topped 1,000.
Today, our Squad members represent about 80 schools in the Washington area, and UAS is proud to be a destination for students visiting D.C. from other states and countries.
UAS becomes a nonprofit!
In March 2017, we received our tax-exempt status from the IRS, and our designation as a 501(c)(3), charitable educational organization. This was a wonderful moment for UAS; it gives us the ability to seek grant funding to support our mission: to provide education support for working families, and to bring community-based, hands-on and experiential learning to K-12 education. It also gives us the opportunity to partner with great organizations such as the National Park Service.
The official nonprofit organization is called Urban Learning and Teaching Center (ULTC), with Urban Adventure Squad (UAS) as a subsidiary program. In common use, we still go by UAS. Sometimes we write ULTC/UAS just to be absolutely clear.
UAS leadership
With our new nonprofit status, we doubled the size of our Board of Directors. Following are short bios for the UAS leadership team:
Eric Glantz, board treasurer, is an audit partner at Raffa, Inc., and an expert in nonprofit accounting audits. At Raffa, he manages audit and tax engagements, and consulting on business, accounting, and tax issues specific to nonprofits.
Nathan Slusher, board secretary, is director of outreach and marketing at American University's Career Center and the former director of academic and career advising at AU’s School of International Service. Before joining AU, Nathan was with the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.
Catherine Brown is vice president of education policy at the Center for American Progress. Before that, she was vice president of policy at Teach for America, a senior consultant for Leadership for Educational Equity, senior education policy adviser for the House Committee on Education and Labor, and the domestic policy adviser for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (2008).
Arati Karnik, M.D., is a family medicine physician and clinical faculty at Chestnut Hill Family Practice’s Residency Program, where she was Teacher of the Year in 2011 and 2014. She attended medical school at Temple University and completed her training, and then a Faculty Development Fellowship, at Montefiore Medical Center’s Department of Family and Social Medicine. Arati’s educational interests include evidence-based medicine, clinical teaching, and enhancing ambulatory medicine curricula. She is also interested in integrative medicine and has completed acupuncture training. Clinically, she wants to continue caring for the underserved and addressing health disparities. Arati is a member of the American Academy of Family Physicians, Physicians for a National Healthcare Plan, and the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine.
Amanda Ripley is a writer and a senior fellow at the Emerson Collective. She is the author, most recently, of The Smartest Kids in the World--and How They Got That Way, a New York Times bestseller. Her first book, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes--and Why, was published in 15 countries and turned into a PBS documentary. In her books and magazine writing, Amanda explores the gap between public policy and human behavior. For Time and The Atlantic, she has written cover stories on the primacy of sports in American high schools, the college of the future, and the science of motivating children. She has visited schools on four continents and interviewed hundreds of kids, teachers and parents. Amanda’s son was a founding member of Urban Adventure Squad.
Elana Mintz is the founder of Urban Adventure Squad and executive director of Urban Learning and Teaching Center, a D.C.-based, nonprofit organization that provides education support to working families on days when schools are closed, and which seeks to integrate community-based, experiential learning programs in the K-12 curriculum. Elana spent over 20 years in editorial and communications positions at CNA, the Brookings Institution, the National Conference of State Legislatures, and Congressional Quarterly. Her two older children were founding members of Urban Adventure Squad.
Christy Brock is director of programming for Urban Adventure Squad. She researches, develops curricula for, and leads all UAS programs. She is the Squad’s best resource for magical, not-to-be-missed, family-friendly places in D.C., but she won't divulge all Squad secrets! Christy graduated from American University in 2008 with a literature degree, and has cared for and taught children since then. Before becoming UAS director of programming, she was a nanny and taught preschool at Washington Hebrew Congregation's Early Childhood Center. Christy is certified in First Aid and CPR, and is a certified Freedom Barre Instructor and avid runner.
Innovative programming
UAS has now created over 100 unique days of community-based, experiential learning programs for students in PK-4 through 8th grade. We are working on aligning these lesson plans with established standardized curriculum programs such as Common Core, and on generating evidence of learning without using the computer-based testing that many standardized curriculum programs entail. Our gold standard is to find ways to integrate assessments within learning units rather than to administer student surveys. This goal slows down the lesson-planning alignment efforts, but when we get it right, the outcomes can be extraordinary.
Last week, during our 4th Annual Recycled Materials Carnival program--which ended with a ridiculously fun carnival!--many of the student-created games were based on the learning module we did with students earlier in the week, which focused on simple machines (levers, inclined planes, and Archimedes screws). Simple machines generally use gravity to generate energy. So although the games at the carnival were somewhat repetitive as a result, they were clear evidence that students understood gravity; some even sought to manipulate gravitational energy to alter movement direction. We might have an irrigation engineer among our future network of Squad alums!
In 2017, Urban Adventure Squad was hired by D.C. International, a public charter middle school, to develop and run programming for 6th-8th grades on Friday afternoons, when DCI dismisses at 1:00. We generally do not offer after-school programs because there is not enough time to run UAS programs that involve outdoor time, hands-on experimentation, and visits to community organizations, but on Fridays at DCI we have a full four hours. We adapted our eight-hour program day to achieve the best outcomes for this age group, and last fall, we offered the following units:
Electronic Trash Art, in which students hiked, took field trips, learned to take apart old, donated electronics, heard guest speakers on found object art and on recycling, learned about the environmental, social, and economic consequences of electronic waste, and created their own final art pieces.
Pop-up Restaurant, during which students visited with local chefs and restaurant executives to understand the local food business, and created their own pop-up restaurant that they named, “Good Vibes and Empanadas.”
D.C. Performing Arts: History and Culture, a three-week unit with local performing arts organizations: the Howard University Step Team, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, and Round House Theatre.
Community organizations and guest educators
In 2017, we partnered with dozens of people and organizations for hands-on learning experiences all over D.C. Here is just a sampling of the incredible opportunities we have had in the last year:
None of this would be possible without UAS Squad leaders, who are the heart of our organization. Our Squad leaders have a diverse set of career and life experiences, and are excited to teach children, spend time outdoors, and create innovative, hands-on and experiential learning programs. UAS is a place where Squad leaders can experiment with and test new curriculum ideas, and receive regular feedback from our students and from colleagues.
In 2017, UAS Squad leaders have included undergraduate students, part-time educators, stay-at-home parents who have rejoined the workforce, Ph.D. candidates, and career changers. Last year, we were also approved as a Public Service Work Study partner with American University, which means that we are able to hire work-study students from AU, and which opens our recruitment to a new population. Next, we are exploring the possibility of recruiting AmeriCorps and Teach for America volunteers.
If you know anyone whose experience and interests align with our mission, please let them know about us. We are always look for committed, enthusiastic people to join us. The career path of Squad leaders in UAS begins with training during our program days, and as their time and interests grow, they are able to take on program development and curriculum research. For those who are passionate about the UAS model and see a long-term career with us, we expect to offer them full-time positions. We are particularly interested in developing Squad leaders who can run independent locations, as our registrations from different parts of the city continue to grow.
Recruitment has been a challenge. For example, we cannot hire someone who is only available to work on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Most of our programs take place on Mondays and Fridays. Also, many potential recruits want to start full-time. Our belief is that Squad leaders who would become full-time employees must first spend time training in our programs on a part-time basis and understanding the UAS approach to community-based learning.
On the full-time side of the house, UAS went from one to two full-time paid employees in 2017—Christy Brock, UAS director of programming, and me. We generally have one to two Squad leaders who provide part-time administrative and program assistance, and we are looking at creating at least one more half-time position in early 2018 that should become full-time by the year’s end.
Communications and outreach
Our email subscriber list for the "UAS Update," our e-newsletter, topped 1,000 subscribers in 2017! We expanded our presence on social media by Tweeting from our programs so that families, educators, and other interested followers could get a real-time sense of #SquadLife, our learning goals, and our focus on community-based, experiential learning. If you are not following us, please join us (@UrbanAdvSquad). If you’re a Squad family, it’s the fastest way to learn about what your kids are doing on a program day.
We’re taking the leap to Facebook: I joined—about a million years after my peers—and our Urban Adventure Squad page is in development, to be published soon.
We're looking at Instagram as a possible next step, but we want to be careful not to spread ourselves too thin, given that we remain a very small organization. We've had some great conversations about this with members of our Squad community, our board of directors, and our staff, and we always love to hear your ideas; you can reach us at [email protected].
Grants and Fundraising
We started our fundraising efforts this year, and we made a nice start! Since Thanksgiving Day, your tax-deductible donations totaled almost $2000. We hope you'll consider supporting our efforts to expand to communities that need us, to offer scholarships to families who cannot afford our programs, and to provide general support to our programs. You can make a donation of any amount that fits your budget, and we promise to make every penny count.
We are looking for opportunities to partner with schools and other organizations, including community health centers, environmental stewardship organizations, parks departments, and all areas of enrichment programs for children.
We have begun applying for grant opportunities as we find them, but it’s our next big challenge. We lack expertise and experience in grant strategy and grant writing. If you can help us in any way, or have ideas or referrals, we'd love to hear from you. You can email us, [email protected], or complete our UAS Community Survey.
Plans for 2018 and beyond
First, we have started building a UAS scholarship fund from which we can offer need-based financial aid to families in 2018. This is central to our mission of providing support for working families, and we have wrestled with how to develop the program for quite some time. It’s time for us to try it out.
We want to expand to serve more families across the D.C. area—particularly in southeast and southwest D.C., where we do not yet run programs—and to explore ways to help schools and school communities across the country offer community-based, experiential learning programs using UAS curricula.
We are also working on enabling family subscriptions to UAS, which would allow families to purchase a discounted pack of program days for use across program days and with multiple children. The subscription would not allow preferential, last-minute registration for specific program days; families would follow general registration deadlines to use their subscriptions.
We want to provide more opportunities for schoolsinterested in half-day or full-day UAS programming, and to help develop innovative, hands-on, community-based programming that enriches existing lesson planning.
We want to create UAS professional development opportunities and certification programs in community-based, experiential learning for educators.
We want to raise money for a van--a real Squadmobile!—that will function as both mobile storage and a mobile learning lab that goes to programs, community events, and pop-up educational opportunities across the D.C. area. Ideally, this is a fuel-efficient vehicle with great storage space that carries our awesome logo. So it will take significant fundraising, but we think we can do it by 2020.
We would like to share or own a UAS teaching farm, which would allow us to have a permanent space for our gardening education programs, and which would become part of our existing lesson plans. For example, our popular pop-up restaurant programs for elementary and middle school could expand to include farm-to-table, food waste, composting, and harvesting work—something we cannot currently do.
Seeking education reform
The American education system is not set up to support modern working families, who are often financially and emotionally stressed trying to fill the gaps between when they work and when their children attend school. But schools are stressed, too—teachers and administrators are under enormous pressure to meet curriculum goals.
Urban Adventure Squad fills these gaps by creating a joy-filled, curiosity-driven, community-based curriculum that gives students a voice in their education, unstructured time, and learning experiences that they often cannot access in a traditional classroom.
We think our model is most relevant to schools and school systems that have suffered from budget cuts, teacher losses, and demands for greater testing. A big reason for using a community-based teaching curriculum is to lower the costs that school systems pay to large education firms. Instead, we ask that teachers are paid more and trained better so that they may be able to develop community-based lesson plans. We can help make this happen.
Come join us!
We invite you to join us for a hike, a morning meeting, an afternoon design project, or anything that fits your schedule and your interests. Some of our best ideas come from observers of our work who’ve experienced, first-hand, what we’re building.
With your help, resources, ideas, and wonderful feedback, we're building an organization that supports working families and brings our model of community-based, experiential learning to students across the D.C. area and beyond.
We would love for you to see the exciting work that our Squad members are doing, the questions they're asking, the magical D.C. places they're discovering, and the community organizations who are helping us educate them (and all of us!).
If you’ve read this far, thank you. All of us at Urban Adventure Squad wish you peace, health, and a little time for adventure in the new year.
Happy UAS 2018!
Elana Mintz
Founder, Urban Adventure Squad
Executive Director, Urban Learning and Teaching Center
Smile! Your Amazon purchases support your Squad when you use this link to shop:
https://smile.amazon.com/ch/81-3314763
UAS Annual Report
Dear Friends of UAS,
We have a lot of words at Urban Adventure Squad. (Have you seen the emails we send ahead of our programs?) But it's hard to find the right ones to describe a year as exciting as our very first one as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, charitable education organization.
Apart from our restructuring, we welcomed 650 individual Squad members and held 120—yes, 120!—different program days. Our network of Squad Leaders grew to 13. Since launching our fundraising drive on Giving Tuesday (Nov. 28), we have raised nearly $2000 in individual donations. Our subscriber list for the UAS Update--this e-newsletter--topped 1,000.
Today, our Squad members represent about 80 schools in the Washington area, and UAS is proud to be a destination for students visiting D.C. from other states and countries.
UAS becomes a nonprofit!
In March 2017, we received our tax-exempt status from the IRS, and our designation as a 501(c)(3), charitable educational organization. This was a wonderful moment for UAS; it gives us the ability to seek grant funding to support our mission: to provide education support for working families, and to bring community-based, hands-on and experiential learning to K-12 education. It also gives us the opportunity to partner with great organizations such as the National Park Service.
The official nonprofit organization is called Urban Learning and Teaching Center (ULTC), with Urban Adventure Squad (UAS) as a subsidiary program. In common use, we still go by UAS. Sometimes we write ULTC/UAS just to be absolutely clear.
UAS leadership
With our new nonprofit status, we doubled the size of our Board of Directors. Following are short bios for the UAS leadership team:
Eric Glantz, board treasurer, is an audit partner at Raffa, Inc., and an expert in nonprofit accounting audits. At Raffa, he manages audit and tax engagements, and consulting on business, accounting, and tax issues specific to nonprofits.
Nathan Slusher, board secretary, is director of outreach and marketing at American University's Career Center and the former director of academic and career advising at AU’s School of International Service. Before joining AU, Nathan was with the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.
Catherine Brown is vice president of education policy at the Center for American Progress. Before that, she was vice president of policy at Teach for America, a senior consultant for Leadership for Educational Equity, senior education policy adviser for the House Committee on Education and Labor, and the domestic policy adviser for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (2008).
Arati Karnik, M.D., is a family medicine physician and clinical faculty at Chestnut Hill Family Practice’s Residency Program, where she was Teacher of the Year in 2011 and 2014. She attended medical school at Temple University and completed her training, and then a Faculty Development Fellowship, at Montefiore Medical Center’s Department of Family and Social Medicine. Arati’s educational interests include evidence-based medicine, clinical teaching, and enhancing ambulatory medicine curricula. She is also interested in integrative medicine and has completed acupuncture training. Clinically, she wants to continue caring for the underserved and addressing health disparities. Arati is a member of the American Academy of Family Physicians, Physicians for a National Healthcare Plan, and the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine.
Amanda Ripley is a writer and a senior fellow at the Emerson Collective. She is the author, most recently, of The Smartest Kids in the World--and How They Got That Way, a New York Times bestseller. Her first book, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes--and Why, was published in 15 countries and turned into a PBS documentary. In her books and magazine writing, Amanda explores the gap between public policy and human behavior. For Time and The Atlantic, she has written cover stories on the primacy of sports in American high schools, the college of the future, and the science of motivating children. She has visited schools on four continents and interviewed hundreds of kids, teachers and parents. Amanda’s son was a founding member of Urban Adventure Squad.
Elana Mintz is the founder of Urban Adventure Squad and executive director of Urban Learning and Teaching Center, a D.C.-based, nonprofit organization that provides education support to working families on days when schools are closed, and which seeks to integrate community-based, experiential learning programs in the K-12 curriculum. Elana spent over 20 years in editorial and communications positions at CNA, the Brookings Institution, the National Conference of State Legislatures, and Congressional Quarterly. Her two older children were founding members of Urban Adventure Squad.
Christy Brock is director of programming for Urban Adventure Squad. She researches, develops curricula for, and leads all UAS programs. She is the Squad’s best resource for magical, not-to-be-missed, family-friendly places in D.C., but she won't divulge all Squad secrets! Christy graduated from American University in 2008 with a literature degree, and has cared for and taught children since then. Before becoming UAS director of programming, she was a nanny and taught preschool at Washington Hebrew Congregation's Early Childhood Center. Christy is certified in First Aid and CPR, and is a certified Freedom Barre Instructor and avid runner.
Innovative programming
UAS has now created over 100 unique days of community-based, experiential learning programs for students in PK-4 through 8th grade. We are working on aligning these lesson plans with established standardized curriculum programs such as Common Core, and on generating evidence of learning without using the computer-based testing that many standardized curriculum programs entail. Our gold standard is to find ways to integrate assessments within learning units rather than to administer student surveys. This goal slows down the lesson-planning alignment efforts, but when we get it right, the outcomes can be extraordinary.
Last week, during our 4th Annual Recycled Materials Carnival program--which ended with a ridiculously fun carnival!--many of the student-created games were based on the learning module we did with students earlier in the week, which focused on simple machines (levers, inclined planes, and Archimedes screws). Simple machines generally use gravity to generate energy. So although the games at the carnival were somewhat repetitive as a result, they were clear evidence that students understood gravity; some even sought to manipulate gravitational energy to alter movement direction. We might have an irrigation engineer among our future network of Squad alums!
In 2017, Urban Adventure Squad was hired by D.C. International, a public charter middle school, to develop and run programming for 6th-8th grades on Friday afternoons, when DCI dismisses at 1:00. We generally do not offer after-school programs because there is not enough time to run UAS programs that involve outdoor time, hands-on experimentation, and visits to community organizations, but on Fridays at DCI we have a full four hours. We adapted our eight-hour program day to achieve the best outcomes for this age group, and last fall, we offered the following units:
Electronic Trash Art, in which students hiked, took field trips, learned to take apart old, donated electronics, heard guest speakers on found object art and on recycling, learned about the environmental, social, and economic consequences of electronic waste, and created their own final art pieces.
Pop-up Restaurant, during which students visited with local chefs and restaurant executives to understand the local food business, and created their own pop-up restaurant that they named, “Good Vibes and Empanadas.”
D.C. Performing Arts: History and Culture, a three-week unit with local performing arts organizations: the Howard University Step Team, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, and Round House Theatre.
Community organizations and guest educators
In 2017, we partnered with dozens of people and organizations for hands-on learning experiences all over D.C. Here is just a sampling of the incredible opportunities we have had in the last year:
- We learned American Sign Language from guest educator Patricia Suarez at Gallaudet University.
- We worked with urban gardening organizations, including Cultivate the City and City Blossoms, to learning about composting, harvesting, and preparing farm-fresh food. harvest and prepare food.
- We met with local environmental activist Steve Dryden, who runs Rock Creek Songbirds, for a lesson on the migratory patterns of D.C.’s official bird, the wood thrush.
- We did a mock dig with local nonprofit Archaeology in the Community at Inspired Teaching Public Charter School.
- We placed placards on local sewers in partnership with the D.C. Department of Energy and Environment, to let people know that when trash goes down street drains, it ends up in our waterways.
- We planted wildflower plugs in the newly restored meadows at Tregaron Conservancy.
- We danced and drummed at Hands on Drums;
- We learned about food waste with the World Wildlife Fund.
- We learned about scrap recycling from Billy Johnson of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, who brought parts of a car and taught students about the recycling process;
- We visited Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company for a behind-the-scenes look the technical aspects of theater—set design, props, costumes, lighting—including a visit with the master electrician;
- We had a workshop with the Howard University Step Team;
- We took behind-the-scenes tours of Timber Pizza Co. and TaKorean;
- We took a stage combat workshop with teaching artists from Round House Theatre.
None of this would be possible without UAS Squad leaders, who are the heart of our organization. Our Squad leaders have a diverse set of career and life experiences, and are excited to teach children, spend time outdoors, and create innovative, hands-on and experiential learning programs. UAS is a place where Squad leaders can experiment with and test new curriculum ideas, and receive regular feedback from our students and from colleagues.
In 2017, UAS Squad leaders have included undergraduate students, part-time educators, stay-at-home parents who have rejoined the workforce, Ph.D. candidates, and career changers. Last year, we were also approved as a Public Service Work Study partner with American University, which means that we are able to hire work-study students from AU, and which opens our recruitment to a new population. Next, we are exploring the possibility of recruiting AmeriCorps and Teach for America volunteers.
If you know anyone whose experience and interests align with our mission, please let them know about us. We are always look for committed, enthusiastic people to join us. The career path of Squad leaders in UAS begins with training during our program days, and as their time and interests grow, they are able to take on program development and curriculum research. For those who are passionate about the UAS model and see a long-term career with us, we expect to offer them full-time positions. We are particularly interested in developing Squad leaders who can run independent locations, as our registrations from different parts of the city continue to grow.
Recruitment has been a challenge. For example, we cannot hire someone who is only available to work on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Most of our programs take place on Mondays and Fridays. Also, many potential recruits want to start full-time. Our belief is that Squad leaders who would become full-time employees must first spend time training in our programs on a part-time basis and understanding the UAS approach to community-based learning.
On the full-time side of the house, UAS went from one to two full-time paid employees in 2017—Christy Brock, UAS director of programming, and me. We generally have one to two Squad leaders who provide part-time administrative and program assistance, and we are looking at creating at least one more half-time position in early 2018 that should become full-time by the year’s end.
Communications and outreach
Our email subscriber list for the "UAS Update," our e-newsletter, topped 1,000 subscribers in 2017! We expanded our presence on social media by Tweeting from our programs so that families, educators, and other interested followers could get a real-time sense of #SquadLife, our learning goals, and our focus on community-based, experiential learning. If you are not following us, please join us (@UrbanAdvSquad). If you’re a Squad family, it’s the fastest way to learn about what your kids are doing on a program day.
We’re taking the leap to Facebook: I joined—about a million years after my peers—and our Urban Adventure Squad page is in development, to be published soon.
We're looking at Instagram as a possible next step, but we want to be careful not to spread ourselves too thin, given that we remain a very small organization. We've had some great conversations about this with members of our Squad community, our board of directors, and our staff, and we always love to hear your ideas; you can reach us at [email protected].
Grants and Fundraising
We started our fundraising efforts this year, and we made a nice start! Since Thanksgiving Day, your tax-deductible donations totaled almost $2000. We hope you'll consider supporting our efforts to expand to communities that need us, to offer scholarships to families who cannot afford our programs, and to provide general support to our programs. You can make a donation of any amount that fits your budget, and we promise to make every penny count.
We are looking for opportunities to partner with schools and other organizations, including community health centers, environmental stewardship organizations, parks departments, and all areas of enrichment programs for children.
We have begun applying for grant opportunities as we find them, but it’s our next big challenge. We lack expertise and experience in grant strategy and grant writing. If you can help us in any way, or have ideas or referrals, we'd love to hear from you. You can email us, [email protected], or complete our UAS Community Survey.
Plans for 2018 and beyond
First, we have started building a UAS scholarship fund from which we can offer need-based financial aid to families in 2018. This is central to our mission of providing support for working families, and we have wrestled with how to develop the program for quite some time. It’s time for us to try it out.
We want to expand to serve more families across the D.C. area—particularly in southeast and southwest D.C., where we do not yet run programs—and to explore ways to help schools and school communities across the country offer community-based, experiential learning programs using UAS curricula.
We are also working on enabling family subscriptions to UAS, which would allow families to purchase a discounted pack of program days for use across program days and with multiple children. The subscription would not allow preferential, last-minute registration for specific program days; families would follow general registration deadlines to use their subscriptions.
We want to provide more opportunities for schoolsinterested in half-day or full-day UAS programming, and to help develop innovative, hands-on, community-based programming that enriches existing lesson planning.
We want to create UAS professional development opportunities and certification programs in community-based, experiential learning for educators.
We want to raise money for a van--a real Squadmobile!—that will function as both mobile storage and a mobile learning lab that goes to programs, community events, and pop-up educational opportunities across the D.C. area. Ideally, this is a fuel-efficient vehicle with great storage space that carries our awesome logo. So it will take significant fundraising, but we think we can do it by 2020.
We would like to share or own a UAS teaching farm, which would allow us to have a permanent space for our gardening education programs, and which would become part of our existing lesson plans. For example, our popular pop-up restaurant programs for elementary and middle school could expand to include farm-to-table, food waste, composting, and harvesting work—something we cannot currently do.
Seeking education reform
The American education system is not set up to support modern working families, who are often financially and emotionally stressed trying to fill the gaps between when they work and when their children attend school. But schools are stressed, too—teachers and administrators are under enormous pressure to meet curriculum goals.
Urban Adventure Squad fills these gaps by creating a joy-filled, curiosity-driven, community-based curriculum that gives students a voice in their education, unstructured time, and learning experiences that they often cannot access in a traditional classroom.
We think our model is most relevant to schools and school systems that have suffered from budget cuts, teacher losses, and demands for greater testing. A big reason for using a community-based teaching curriculum is to lower the costs that school systems pay to large education firms. Instead, we ask that teachers are paid more and trained better so that they may be able to develop community-based lesson plans. We can help make this happen.
Come join us!
We invite you to join us for a hike, a morning meeting, an afternoon design project, or anything that fits your schedule and your interests. Some of our best ideas come from observers of our work who’ve experienced, first-hand, what we’re building.
With your help, resources, ideas, and wonderful feedback, we're building an organization that supports working families and brings our model of community-based, experiential learning to students across the D.C. area and beyond.
We would love for you to see the exciting work that our Squad members are doing, the questions they're asking, the magical D.C. places they're discovering, and the community organizations who are helping us educate them (and all of us!).
If you’ve read this far, thank you. All of us at Urban Adventure Squad wish you peace, health, and a little time for adventure in the new year.
Happy UAS 2018!
Elana Mintz
Founder, Urban Adventure Squad
Executive Director, Urban Learning and Teaching Center
Smile! Your Amazon purchases support your Squad when you use this link to shop:
https://smile.amazon.com/ch/81-3314763