At Holy Angels, we acknowledge that the holistic wellness of our scholars leads to stronger outcomes academically and behaviorally, and sets the stage for a more sustainable and healthier life. The area surrounding our school has numerous vacant buildings, litter in the streets, and is considered a “food desert.” Our vision is to transform and revitalize our community by becoming the highest performing urban, Catholic school in the city of Indianapolis. We will do this by living out our core values of Seek, Persist, Excel, Love, and Serve in our school and community.

Unique Roots is a group of our scholars who are helping our school and community become more sustainable and environmentally aware. Scholars live our core value of SERVE by taking responsibility for our chickens, garden towers, outdoor box gardens, composting, and recycling. We are in the development stages of creating an engaging and project-based curriculum that incorporates scholar voice and choice, strong use of data, assessment, and feedback. Currently, we are utilizing the Green Bronx Machine curriculum for our 3rd and 4th grade classes, which incorporates the use of three tower gardens that were donated to Holy Angels by Anthem during the 2018-2019 school year. 

Our goal is to use the resources we already have in place to expand our programming to Kindergarten-6th grade. The evidence from our 3rd and 4th graders has shown that when our scholars get curious about the world around them they want to know more about how it works and ways they can serve to improve it. Every day the scholars using this curriculum are collecting data, analyzing this data, problem solving, and using critical thinking skills to develop creative solutions. By creating and implementing the Unique Roots class we will be able to increase scholar leadership opportunities, achievement, and engagement from Kindergarten-6th grade.

We are determined to work toward our vision of transforming and revitalizing our school and community by helping end poverty, food insecurities, and educational inequality. One of our root beliefs is: We are one family; home, school, and community. By living out this root belief we will move closer to achieving our vision and ensure our scholars do not have to leave their community to live, learn, and earn in a better one. As Stephen Ritz, founder of Green Bronx Machine, stated, “Invite scholars into solving interesting problems that relate to their world. That’s what will move them from being apart from their community to being a part of it.”