Help Flowering Tree School Waukegan, IL REOPEN

For the Students:

Imagine a school that is driven by your passions and curiosities. Imagine a school that is shaped by its students, molded in a genuine desire for learning, and fostered by educators that care more for acquiring knowledge than the competition of grades. IMAGINE A SCHOOL BEING FUN!

For the Parents:

Imagine a school where your kid jumps out of bed excited to go. Imagine having no limits to your child’s education. Imagine your child disappointed summer has arrived because they don’t want to miss school.

For the Educator:

Imagine a school combines the educational philosophies of Gardner/Steiner/Collins/and Orange in a differentiated curriculum with documented state standard achievement.

This is Flowering Tree on the Back of the Great Turtle: Living History and Original Nations Educational Resource Center

Founder:

Joe Russell III, FCT, OblSB, MEd, Social Studies

Flowering Tree was based at the historic St. Joseph's Church campus, 509 S. Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. Waukegan, Illinois until March 2019 without explanation. Although we have been prevented from operating at St. Joseph's, we continue to operate offsite at libraries and virtually by Zoom.

Flowering Tree serves Pre-K to post-secondary students of various heritages, education needs & goals, and religious faiths. We continue to provide differentiated and multi-cirricular opportunities for students to participate in a global agro-educational format.

Flowering Tree's Ag-Ed program includes botany, biology, limnology & urban farming. Our Social Science curriculum teaches History, Geology, Geography, cultures and Languages through textile art. Our Math department utilizes music education and vintage instruments to teach basic Math, Geometry, Arithmetic, and Algebra.

The Flowering Tree/St. Joseph’s Connection

 

St. Joseph’s Church is historically significant to the City of Waukegan, Illinois, and Lake County, IL as an immigration port of entry. During the last year of The American Civil War the German nuns who staffed St. Joseph’s created a hub from which Lithuian, German, Polish, Irish, and subsequently Pueto Rican immigrants joined and were inculcated into the extent migrating freed African and Indigenous communities.

Joe Russell III, Flowering Tree founder, is bi-racial, (a member of the Arapahoe Nation, a tribal Winkta and elder), and African-American). Joe is a Master Educator with multiple graduate degrees, historian, tailor/costumer, and farmer!

The inter-relationship of local cultures, inductive & non-secular scholastic approach, and food production within a Waukegan’s only food desert promises to revive hope, increase skill sets within the community, goodwill, and community building once Flowering Tree is allowed to return home. We ask you to donate to this cause:

•to assist us with the cost of storing our academic, gardening, and technical supplies/equipment until we secure a new location.

•for relocation to a new campus withing Waukegan's 1st ward–our rooted place.

•to compensate staff and teachers during our curriculum re-innovation/restructuring.

Thank you for your consideration, support and prayers. Please donate to and share this campaign.