TEDxManhattan - Stephen Ritz - Green Bronx Machine - Growing Our Way Into A New Economy
Stephen Ritz is a South Bronx teacher/administrator. With the help of extended student and community family they have grown over 25,000 pounds of vegetables in the Bronx while generating extraordinary academic performance. His Bronx classroom features the first indoor edible wall in NYC DOE which routinely generates enough produce to feed 450 students healthy meals and trains the youngest nationally certified workforce in America. Stephen has consistently moved attendance from 40% to 93% daily, helped fund/create 2,200 youth jobs, captured the US EPA Award for transforming mindsets and landscapes in NYC, recently won the ABC Above and Beyond Award, helped earn his school the first ever Citywide Award of Excellence from the NYC Strategic Alliance for Health and attributes these results directly to growing vegetables in school. His speech at Columbia University, "From Crack to Cucumbers," along with the release of a You-Tube Video (Urban Farming NYC) resulted in a national following including an invite to the White House Garden. Dedicated to harvesting hope and cultivating minds, Stephen dreams of opening a nationally replicable Career Technical Education public school in the poorest Congressional District in America rooted in urban agriculture, green and sustainable initiatives. For more information, visit
http://www.greenbronxmachine.com
10 Comments
marinaraactually i don't agree w/ a thing this guy says
b/c nobody is gonna garden in harlem
but anyhow I love the attitude. *promote best power point i spend today
siftbotPromoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, February 6th, 2012 8:11am PST - promote requested by marinara.
marinaraseriously I just can't shake the feeling this guy would spend his time better teaching kids how to endure a life of crushing disappointment than teaching them how to grow flowers in a shithole like harlem. Yes I see the circular logic, of castigating someone for trying to improve a shithole.
longdeA tour of Harlem’s gardens and history
"According to Worley, visitors are frequently amazed that places like the Wilson Community Garden exist in Harlem. Worley said she would expect that kind of reaction 20 years ago, but is more surprised by it today."
Yes they are not food gardens, but I think this attitude can be re-focused on badly needed fresh food gardens.
>> ^marinara:
actually i don't agree w/ a thing this guy says
b/c nobody is gonna garden in harlem
but anyhow I love the attitude. promote best power point i spend today
notarobotThis man has the most wonky wavy-armed speaking style I've seen in a long time.
(And I'll bet his sixth grade class loves him for it!)
*Quality ideas should be *promoted.
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Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Thursday, February 9th, 2012 11:59pm PST - promote requested by notarobot.
bobknight33Putting school kids to work. Newt Gingrich recently said something like that and the left all put him down.
When you empower people, (children) they get self esteem and then all things are possible.
Great video. Great idea. Great teacher. We could all use more teachers like that.
RhesusMonk*promote
siftbotPromoting this video back to the front page; last published Friday, February 10th, 2012 2:13am PST - promote requested by RhesusMonk.
Hanover_Phistsays...I loved that video. Thanks for posting!
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