9th Grade

Essential Question: How can communities create sustainable systems that nourish both people and ecosystems?

This interdisciplinary project invites our SABE 9th grade students to investigate how our local communities can create and institute more sustainable and equitable food systems. Through research, literature, field experience, and civic action students will explore themes of sustainability, food access, food justice, and community responsibility. Students will examine novels like Family Style, Dry, and The Hunger Games, visit The Foodshed and local farms, and engage in hands on statistical analysis in efforts to discern concepts such as Food is Medicine, regenerative farming, our local food networks, the journey of food, food deserts, and the systems that shape where our school meals come from. Students will analyze how decisions about food production and distribution affect both human and environmental well-being. Students will build advocacy skills by evaluating our community’s current food systems and proposing actionable solutions, backed by their personal research, experience, and class learning, and proposing actionable solutions that elevate student voice. This project will introduce students to civic engagement pathways, grounded in principles of Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), and provide meaningful opportunities to practice skills that align with future participation in obtaining California's Seal of Civic Engagement. 

In English students will investigate how food systems, sustainability, and resource access shape communities through literature, research, and advocacy. After visiting the San Diego Foodshed students will engage in literary analysis of the novels Family Style, Dry, and The Hunger Games to examine themes of food memories, food culture, food access, scarcity, and civic responsibility. They will develop evidence-based arguments advocating for sustainable and community-centered food practices and participate in hands-on activities like creating self-watering planters. 

In Green Up and Go students will investigate how energy flows, how systems work together, and how design thinking can lead to meaningful solutions. Projects include designing aquaponics systems, programming electric cars, building wind turbines, testing solar panels, and designing nature-inspired solutions through biomimicry. Throughout the course, students apply the engineering design process, collaborate in teams, and develop the critical thinking and communication skills essential for future careers in green technology and environmental science.

This course integrates Life Science with Earth and Space Science, following the three-course model for the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Units are based on the six instructional segments outlined in the California Framework and include: Ecosystem Interactions and Energy, History of Earth’s Atmosphere: Photosynthesis and Respiration,  Evidence of Evolution,  Inheritance of Traits, Structure, Function, and Growth (from cells to organisms), Ecosystem Stability & the Response to Climate Change. Students will engage in the Science and Engineering Practices (SEP) as well as the Crosscutting Concepts (CCC) to explore phenomena demonstrating the Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI) of each instructional segment.  

Integrated Math I is the first of three math course in a common core curriculum required to graduate high school. It is also the first of three college preparatory math courses which meets UC/CSU "a-g" requirements. This course will emphasize skills necessary for problem solving and continued growth in mathematics. This course will involve group work, along with independent work, and will aim to make each student a better problem solver.