Where Children Learn by Doing

At Acton Upstate we’re hands-on. Our Eagles get real-world experience, working as a team to plan, budget, implement and market goods and services to the local community through the Learner Garden and Entrepreneurship Projects.

A Closer Look

Our Learner Garden

Learners plan, plant, tend and harvest the school garden. They work as a team to research and develop a garden “blueprint” that is conducive to plot allotment, including appropriate spacing of plants, etc. Within a predetermined budget, Eagles work with a local seed bank to select a variety of fruits and vegetables suited to local climate. Learners will decide to start seedlings inside during early spring or direct plant and develop a timeline and procedures accordingly. Eagles will decide when to harvest and how to use produce from the garden. They might choose to incorporate harvested goods into school meals, sell at road side stand located at the front of the schoolyard, utilize in annual Entrepreneurship Projects, etc. A portion of the profits from road side or family sales will go to payback start up cost. Remaining profit will be deposited into the learner fund to be used at learners’ discretion, i.e. community gatherings.

Our Stewardship Project

Acton Upstate will emphasize the service portion of the hero’s journey through a hands-on community service project. Learners will identify a need within the community and formulate an actionable plan on how to address said need. These projects could address anything from environmental stewardship (i.e., cleaning a stretch of road, local park, etc.), economic disparities (clothing drive, book drive, food drive, service at local soup kitchen, etc), volunteering at a local charity (i.e., Habitat for Humanities). Projects will be learner driven and perhaps more complex than examples highlighted above. For example, they could open the learner garden to the community to address the need for healthy, locally grown food alternatives. Eagles can be creative. The aim is for Eagles to see that their plans and actions can be used to the betterment of the community.

Our Entrepreneurship Projects & Farm Festival

Eagles will participate in an annual agriculture-based entrepreneurship project. Projects will be developed individually inline with learners’ personal interests with the opportunity to utilize resources from the farm. Eagles will sell products and/or display results at the annual Farm Festival.