Need in Deed is dedicated to transforming teaching and learning in Philadelphia public school classrooms for grades 3-8. Our unique approach begins with individual educators, encourages students to advocate for change, and connects the classroom with the community.

A Transformational Approach

  • Listening to Students: We start by understanding what students say about their communities’ strengths and challenges and their aspirations to make a difference.
  • Engaging Learning: We connect students’ learning to real-world issues, integrating the school curriculum with the world they see around them.
  • Supporting Educators: We provide classroom educators with effective teaching strategies.
  • Community Integration: We bring city professionals and practitioners into the classroom to enhance the learning experience.

Guided by a vision of equitable public education, Need in Deed honors every child’s right to a high-quality education, acknowledges every child’s potential, dismantles racist and oppressive systems, prioritizes social-emotional well-being, and centers students in the learning experience.

Student-Centered Learning

In Need in Deed classrooms, students learn best when they can relate their school learning to the world around them. Over the school year, students explore their community, define a collective issue they care about, research the issue, and design and implement a civic action project to address it.

This process helps students meet state and local standards while making powerful connections between their skills and real-world applications.

Comprehensive Support

Recognizing that this kind of teaching and learning cannot come from a textbook, Need in Deed actively supports each classroom by providing materials, supplies, books, videos, and information about websites and podcasts. The organization also connects the class with community partners—professionals and practitioners involved in the students’ issue—and offers one-on-one coaching for teacher partners, tailored training, and ongoing professional development throughout the school year and summer.

By wrapping these supports around each classroom, Need in Deed ensures that teaching and learning are dynamic, relevant, and deeply connected to the community.

Real-World Impact

Students learn best when they can make connections to the world around them. That’s why Need in Deed starts with student voice. The students in each class define a community issue around which they then become advocates and take action. The issue and the sequence of the students’ activities over the year become a lens through which the students experience the school curriculum and state learning standards.

Over the school year, as the students collaboratively research, analyze, debate, and develop action steps to address the issue, they meet local professionals and practitioners who can address their questions about the issue. Need in Deed students experience subject matter and skills not as siloed abstracts but as powerful tools that can be used to effect change. The authentic, community-focused learning that students experience in Need in Deed’s supportive classrooms fosters both academic gains and habits and attitudes that lead to a lifetime of civic participation.