Overview

Students explored how to make their homes more fiscally and environmentally sustainable.  Students audited energy use, and worked on sustainable solutions to food security. Working with a local urban farm, they designed and built planter boxes and grew herbs to include in family meals.  

Project Initiation

Due to COVID and distance learning, the project was launched via zoom and recorded in a screencast for students who could not attend the project launch.  Students were introduced to the project, its connection to their families and issues arising from COVID, its purpose and scope, which aspects would be completed in each course, and the overall timeline of the project.  Students were briefly introduced to their Partners - San Diego Public Utilities Dept - Pure Water and Urbanlife Farms.  

Project Exploration and Development

Post project launch, students completed home energy assessments and studied the conservation of energy as related to gravity fed irrigation systems in Physics, completed a planter box design challenge in Intro to Design, and explored modern sanitation, clean water, and sustainability issues through partner Pure Water SD presentations and their historical roots in the Agricultural/Industrial Revolutions in Modern World History.  Partnering with Urbanlife Farms, students learned about cultural and geographic connections to herbs and learned basic farming practices.  Students constructed planters and wrote instructions in Construction Tech, planted their herbs with input from Urbanlife Farms, and documented their learning process throughout the project through vlogs in their English classes.

Project Revision and Exhibition

Students documented most of their processes, reflected upon, and shared their learning in individual vlogs(video blogs) and small mixed media presentations with partners. Presentations from the Planter Box Design challenge were recorded as screen casts and distributed for feedback, revision, and judging. A final presentation of learning will include a vlog gallery walk in late May.

Teachers and Subjects

Tenise Lenta - Math
Kristiana Riego de Dios - ELA
Norma Montano - ELA
Daniel Barone - World History
Arturo Gonzalez - Construction Tech
Krisztina Hagey - Intro to Design
Natasha Banchik - Physics