Dr. Mandy Manna Named a 2026 PA Humanities Window Keeper

Four in the morning, and Mandy Manna’s alarm is already going off. It has been for as long as I have known her, long before the sun touches the fields at Fox Chase Farm and long before the rest of Philadelphia has poured its first cup of coffee. She beats me out of bed every single day, and I do not know a single person who has earned the right to gloat about that more than she has. So when I heard that PA Humanities had named her a 2026 Window Keeper, recognized in the area of Education, I was not surprised in the slightest. I was just glad the rest of the state finally got to see what a handful of us in Philadelphia have known for a long time.

A Friend Who Doesn’t Just Talk About It

Some people talk about making a difference. Mandy gets up and does it, every single day, on a working farm inside a city that most people do not even know has one. Through agricultural education, experiential learning and a genuine commitment to young people, she has spent her career opening doors for kids who had no reason to expect one would open for them.

The honor itself is worth explaining, because most people outside Pennsylvania have never heard of it. PA Humanities launched The Window Keeper: Civic Honors as a statewide program recognizing Pennsylvanians whose everyday work strengthens their communities, timed to the lead up to the nation’s 250th anniversary. The name comes from a poem written by Philadelphia’s own Poet Laureate, Yolanda Wisher, called The Window Keeper, which pictures the Declaration of Independence as a great window that has to be cleaned and cared for so it keeps letting light through. The first class of 25 Window Keepers was chosen by the PA Humanities staff. This second class, the one Mandy belongs to, was different. It came from an open public nomination process, meaning somebody who watched her work up close, not a committee, put her name forward.

PA Humanities announced this year’s 30 honorees on July 20, representing 21 counties across the Commonwealth, recognized across categories that include Education, Culture, History, Arts, Community, Storytelling and Journalism. Mandy is one of the Philadelphia County honorees, named in the Education category, and I do not think there is a more fitting one on the whole list.

21 Years on the Same Farm

Mandy did not arrive at agricultural education by accident. She grew up on a hog farm near Gettysburg, studied agricultural education at Delaware Valley University, and then spent about ten years away from teaching altogether, working in marketing and agribusiness, before something pulled her back to a classroom. The Philadelphia Citizen profiled her career path this year and put a number on what came next: 13 years teaching agricultural science, then 21 years and counting at Fox Chase Farm itself, the last 8 of them as the farm’s principal and administrator. The Commonwealth’s own paperwork on a recent grant lists her the same way, naming her as principal and farm manager leading the district’s agriculture initiative.

What that title does not capture is how she talks about the work. She has said plainly that a lot of people think agriculture begins and ends with cows and plows, when in her experience it touches almost everything else, from food science to engineering to the trades. That is not a talking point I am repeating secondhand. It is how she has actually built the place.

What Happens on 112 Acres in Northeast Philadelphia

Fox Chase Farm sits on 112 acres, straddling the line between Philadelphia and Montgomery County, owned by the City and run by the School District of Philadelphia. WHYY has reported on what makes it unusual: it is one of only two public school teaching farms left in the city, and it draws students from across the district for lessons that do not fit inside a normal classroom. What began mostly as a field trip destination, seeing under 4,000 students a year, has grown under Mandy into 16 academic programs.

Grid Magazine spent time there and came back with a picture of what an ordinary week looks like: 85 teachers trained through the district’s Agriculture Empowerment program, 11 school culinary programs supplied with herbs, eggs and produce grown right there, and a summer employment program that put 38 students to work last year with a goal of reaching 70 this year. Students walk visitors through the farm themselves, sometimes in their own first languages. An equine therapy program on site has been tied to real gains in attendance and behavior for the students who take part.

The Philadelphia Academy of School Leaders wrote about where Mandy wants to take it next: webcams tucked into student built birdhouses that let kids track wild birds without leaving their desks, and a plan for the fall of 2025 to fit farm livestock with wearable monitors, similar to a fitness tracker, so students who cannot get out to Northeast Philadelphia in person can still watch an animal’s health and behavior in real time. She points out that farming has used serious technology for decades, tractors have run on precision GPS for something like 35 years, and her goal is simply to bring that same access to every student in the district, not just the ones who can make the trip. The Commonwealth backed a piece of that vision directly, awarding a Schools to Work grant of 250,000 dollars in 2024 for a Controlled Environment Agriculture pipeline that now prepares 24 students a year for indoor farming careers, with a path into registered trade apprenticeships in plumbing and electrical work.

The Numbers I Carry, and the Ones the State Confirmed

I am going to tell you what I have always understood about the reach of that farm, and I want to be honest that these are the numbers I carry in my head from years of hearing Mandy talk about her work, not a figure I pulled from a report. By my own count, something in the neighborhood of 50,000 visits happen there in a given year, with maybe 10,000 of those being different kids each time. The district’s own public reporting today, through WHYY, puts the farm’s annual visits closer to 30,000, most of them schoolchildren, which on its own is still a remarkable number for 112 acres run by a public school system rather than a park department or a private foundation.

Eighteen years, by my own count, is how long Mandy and I have been dreaming up ideas together, some of them small and some of them a great deal bigger than either of us expected. None of it would look the way it does without Amy Mellinger standing next to her through all of it, someone I have come to think of as her partner in every sense of the word. I have had the privilege of working alongside both of them, and calling Mandy my friend is one of the better things I have gotten to do with my life. PA Humanities picked well. Congratulations, Dr. Manna, and here is to whatever the next 18 years look like, because something tells me you are just getting started.

A Friend Who Doesn’t Just Talk About It

21 Years on the Same Farm

What Happens on 112 Acres in Northeast Philadelphia

The Numbers I Carry, and the Ones the State Confirmed

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