Our Student Leaders
Southwest Early College is a high school dedicated to seeing its students participate and perform well in college classes and earn associates degrees, while still technically being enrolled as ninth to twelfth grade students. Southwest Early College is located within the boundaries of Denver, Colorado off of Dartmouth and Federal. Our school rents its space from the Colorado Heights University, and our students may interact with theirs on occasion. We were the first early college in the state of Colorado.
Although our facility is rather small compared to most schools, our faculty consists of top-notch educators. Due to our school’s small population, our high school instructors are able to create strong relationships with each student, strengthening the bond between teacher and pupil.
Our partner college is the Community College of Denver (CCD), which is found on the Auraria Campus along with two other colleges. There, our students participate in the rigorous environment of education at the university level. Along with the intensity of the classes comes interaction with adult college students, and the freedoms that come with a college student’s schedule.
To get our students ready for the college world, we slowly start to make our students feel more accustomed to college life. For those who are just starting their college classes, the university courses are paired with recitation courses taught by the high school instructors. This is meant to allow students who are new to the college to be able to experience the class while having a strong support to keep them up to snuff.
Project Justification
Southwest Denver Urban River Renewal (SDURR)
We have seven amazing students, Andre, Abigail, Ryann, Carlos, Summer, Henock, and Jordan (J.J) leading our project. For several weeks we have been visiting the Platte River in our community taking water samples. We have been testing for various chemicals in the water. On April 9th we did the big part of our project at Grant Frontier Park in Southwest Denver, which is along the South Platte River. We did various productive projects to help our community. We did things such as clean up trash, beaver-proof cottonwood trees, and beautify the park and trails. We focused both on the ecology of our river and improving the human environment to increase community access and to encourage community members to become stewards of the river.
The next project we did was to help prevent people from putting their trash in the storm drains so we can keep our river clean. The storm drains in our community flow directly into the South Platte. We affixed signs to them, in English and in Spanish, to make people realize they are there and not to put trash in them.
This project benefits our environment by protecting our only native riparian high plains tree in Colorado – the cottonwood. By caging the cottonwood we encourage beavers to cut down invasive species as well as encouraging beavers to naturally migrate to less urban areas so their populations are sustainable. We are also trying to create a better environment for the beavers. With this project we believe everyone will benefit in one way or another, in the sense that we are trying to make the beaver move down the river, and get away from the urban area, protecting the cottonwood, and making the river more accessible for the people in our community.
We did this project because we noticed the reduction of the cottonwood trees and knew that we had to take action. In our community beautifying has always been an issue in the environment since the more people who feel ownership of their parks and river the easier it is to preserve. We decided that it is our community and our neighborhoods that need the most help and work.
We needed to get a water sampling kit. We also had Denver parks and recreation help us with the tools needed. We used McClouds (combination hoe/rakes), rebar, wire, sledge hammers, laupers, wire cutters, shovels, and rakes, among other things.
There were people in Denver Parks and Recreation who wanted us to work farther north in a more affluent neighborhood. We refused to work there and chose to give our attention to the park in our community where work was more needed. There was also an argument that came up about beaver-proofing the trees. People who had a different views think putting cages around the trees was wrong for the beavers. They think that we are depriving the beavers and would mess up their habitat and they won’t be able to sustain themselves. In reality, putting up the cages around cottonwood trees not only saves the native Colorado tree but also moves the beavers to a better environment down the river so then they can eat different trees and have a more sustainable habitat not around people in the city.
While doing these projects we found that many of our students were impacted with this project in one way or another, and they really enjoyed doing this kind of work. They became more aware of what was going on in the community. After talking with the teachers in the science department, we have agreed to make this a yearly project. So not only does our community stay involved, but also other students that will soon become part of the SEC community. During the project we also had one of the local newspapers stop by to see what we were doing. We are hoping that many people have read the article and are inspired by what we are doing, and would like to take action as well and become more involved. 
