In fall 1996, my students at the University of Pennsylvania and I embarked on an adventure with teachers and students at the Sulzberger Middle School in West Philadelphia. Our goal was to explore how a new curriculum organized around “The Urban Watershed” could combine learning, community development, and water resource management.

The whole neighborhood was the classroom with the school at the center. At the heart of the story was Mill Creek, a stream that once flowed across the field where the school playground is now, and still does flow, buried in a sewer that runs right past the school.

~ Anne Whiston Spirn, The Mill Creek Project