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(10/30/20) — This year has been a wake-up call for our world. The overwhelming effects of the COVID-19 crisis and the alarming advancement of global climate change demand an urgent and bold response, and students at Kingsbridge International High School in the Bronx took action during Climate Week NYC.

Climate Week NYC is the biggest climate summit taking place this year and has the slogan, "For New York, for the World," which puts everyone at the heart of climate action and build a better future.

"We can stop climate change in many ways. We can start making virtual campaigns, like using the Internet to spread the effects of pollution and how global warming is affecting our world. People should be scared and when you show them the truth, that's when people really start to take things seriously,"says junior Jorge Rupertí, who provided additional local ways for taking climate action by adding, "We can take climate action where we are. We can recycle, turn off the lights when not in-use, close the water faucet when brushing your teeth, using public transportation or bicycles and not cars and opening windows instead of using the A.C."

New York City's Union Square Metronome adopted a new ecologically sensitive mission during Climate Week, and ongoing. Now, instead of measuring 24-hour cycles, it is measuring a critical window for action to prevent the effects of global warming from becoming irreversible.

Earth Science teacher at Kingsbridge International High School and associate researcher at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), started the 2020-2021 school year by having students dive into the evidence of climate change. "There is so much misinformation and opinions about this topic out there that this is not only confusing the adults, but our younger generations. It is imperative that everyone looks at the evidence that our climate is changing and not opinions based on interests. COVID-19 put the world in action, and although this a big problem for our world now, climate change is actually a bigger problem, it's the real problem," says Mr. Mundo.

“The Earth has a deadline,” that's how Mr. Mundo began his school year, followed by the numbers 7:103:15:40:07, representing the years, days, hours, minutes and seconds until that deadline. "When you see it from this perspective, it opens up your eyes and my students were definitely shocked and moved by these numbers," says Mr. Mundo, who recently made a trip to Union Square's Metronome to make a video to show his students this climate window, since school trips have been cancelled during the pandemic.

Watch Mr. Mundo's video on the Metronome's climate window below:

Yadaris Vega De León, a junior at Kingsbridge International, took the opportunity to visit the Metronome with her family for the first time ever. "I didn't know about the existence of the Metronome before, but as soon as Mr. Mundo showed it to us in class, I thought it was a great place to see in person. Visiting there made me think deeper and reflect on how fast we are running out of time. I think it will not be an easy problem to fix but it will not be impossible to save the planet before time ends," says Yadaris.

"I felt very scared, sad and disappointed to see that we don't have much time left to fix this problem of climate change. We are causing great harm to our future in New York. There is a crisis that we will have to live in if we don't improve the condition of our climate,"says another student at Kingsbridge, Norma Mejía.

During Climate Week NYC, Mr. Mundo challenged his students, remotely and in-person, to create postersthat would promote climate action among the local community. "Creating these posters was a fascinating experience that helped me to open up my eyes and challenged me to begin doing something for Earth's climate from home," says junior Pedro Troncoso Jiménez.

Mr. Mundo has been developing a Climate Change unit plan at the Climate Change Research Initiative at NASA GISS over the last months, that he has started implementing in his classroom and has submitted for NASA's SMD review and publication. Climate Week NYC is hosted in association with the United Nations and the City of New York.

Below are some of the outstanding posters that Kingsbridge International students created for #ClimateChangeWeekKIHS:

(6/20/20) — 25 Kingsbridge students are set to go on a NASA mission to Mars this summer, sort of.

The time for humans to go to Mars is closer than ever in history and last year, our astronomy class dived into our fascinating universe where we explored past and future space missions. Although it will be years before the first humans set foot on Mars, NASA gave us an opportunity to send our names—stenciled on chips—to the Red Planet with NASA's Mars 2020 rover, Perseverance, that will be sent there next month, and represents the initial leg of humanity’s first round trip to another planet.

Having our students' names literally going to Mars is a unique and once-in-a-lifetime experience. "I’m excited and glad my name will be part of the Mars mission next month, it will represent my commitment to astronomy and science in the future," says senior Kiara Rodriguez. Our students were given a personalized boarding pass that guarantees their place in the Perseverance rover to Mars that they also got to keep, "I feel very flattered and lucky that my name and my legacy reaches more than this planet and I think that my family will be very proud of this," says senior and club secretary Ronald Sánchez Ramos.

arlier in our last school year we took a trip to the NYC Center for Aerospace and Applied Mathematics, where astronomy students had the opportunity to join the Astronaut Academy and Mars Mission where they learned about what is it like to live onboard the International Space Station, train as astronauts and take a simulated space mission to Mars, which was a total success. "The Mars mission was such an excellent eye opening experience for me. It made me realize just how crucial and relevant NASA’s expedition missions are to our development and our understanding of the universe as a whole. This experience enhanced my interest in astronomy and simply science as I subject that I’m interested in studying in the future," adds Kiara Lazala.

These out-of-the-world experiences serve to inspire and push our minority students to consider STEM careers, as our club president, Jorge Fernandez, says, "We experienced what it feels like to command a mission. It has opened my curiosity about science and gave me the push I needed to do science. I'm really considering doing mechanical engineering. Maybe I can build a plane or who knows what can I do next, a rocket?"

Matthew Pearce, education program specialist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says, "Right now our target is on the Moon and we're doing that to learn the lessons we need to learn to go to Mars. When I talk about NASA missions and why do we do NASA missions, a lot of it it's about the journey and what you learn along the way and inherent to what we do at NASA is building technology. For example, for the James Webb Telescope, we had to invent 10 new technologies to get it to work, we've been building it over 20 years and we still haven't launched it. The value of building those technologies and the lessons learned from developing those technologies brings us new advancements every day."

The coronavirus has not impacted the Mars Perseverance rover launch schedule.The Perseverance rover is a robotic scientist weighing just under 2,300 pounds and carries 10.9 million names aboard, including the names of 25 Kingsbridge students. It will search for signs of past microbial life, characterize Mars' climate and geology, collect samples for future return to Earth, and help pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet. Perseverance is set to be launched on July 20th, 2020 and will land at Jezero Crater in Mars on February 18, 2021.

(6/6/20) — A new era of human space flight just began! #LaunchAmerica, the first flight into orbit of American astronauts on American rockets from American soil since the end of the space shuttle era in 2011 was launched and for Kingsbridge international students, it was their first time seeing a rocket liftoff!

With over 10.3 million concurrent viewers, this sets the mark for the most-watched event NASA has ever tracked. It was a captivating moment for everyone, as junior Yaira Paredes says, "When the rocket began to fly, I was surprised and shocked by how it went up. I liked the view they were providing of space, and how the Earth looked originally from the outside. The launch was a success, and it was so wonderful to see."

This was an inspirational moment for minority students and it served to get them interested in getting a career in STEM and consider becoming astronauts. Out of all the 565 total space travelers (astronauts) in the world, 65 have been women, "I think it can be better and I hope it is because there are women like me who are very interested in this. This motivates me to further my education in order to contribute in some way to the United States. We need more Latinas in space, we need women to make history," says senior and club historian, Enmy Aracena.

As of today, there have been 13 people of Hispanic descent at NASA who have travelled to space, "I would like to see more Latinos in space. I hope that Launch America keeps promoting the diversity we have in America," says junior Wensly Ramirez, who was fascinated with the liftoff, "I waited so much for this moment. It was awesome to see Falcon 9; I watched it with all my family, it was like a whole family reunion that I enjoyed a lot."

Although the liftoff was originally scheduled for Wednesday May 27th, it was postponed in the last minutes. "I was so excited about the lifttof, but after seeing that scientists postponed it 17 minutes before being launched, I felt sad; however, this shows us that things in science don't go the way you plan them and sometimes things are out of our control, such as the weather that prevented the planned liftoff," says senior and club treasurer, Jesús Tatis Sánchez.

Launch America was an assigned task for Mr. Mundo's students, but it was engaging and a fun one, since students could sketch the scene (see images above) or share their experiences through media. "I think it was a great idea to have this task since I learned a lot and saw everything that happens inside NASA in order to make this a successful trip," says senior and club secretary Melanie Fernández.

This event felt closer to some students as it was a mission from SpaceX and NASA, "It's great to know that Mr. Mundo works at NASA. As a latino student and newcomer, it motivates me to know that my teacher does research there and that I can follow similar opportunities. I actually feel closer to NASA since I know someone who works there," says junior Erick Báez Castillo.

The docking followed the first successful launch of Crew Dragon with astronauts on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 3:22 p.m. May 30th from NASA’s Kennedy Space in Florida, the same launch pad used for the Apollo 11 Moon landing mission.

(3/30/20) — The world just celebrated the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and although our school is closed, the creativity of our students continues, so we decided to support this movement through art!

20 million people joined the first Earth day in 1970 and since then, it has been a journey that our students have also embarked. "Earth Day is important to me because it's a cause that helps to become aware of the things we should change in order to save our world. I should care for it because this is our planet, our home, and if we don't protect our world, it will affect all the resources and its environment," says junior Yaira Paredes.

Earth Day had a different approach this time due to the coronavirus outbreak, although the cut of human activity has definitely brought a positive impact to the planet. "Coronavirus regulations (being at home, not traveling and others) are a good thing for Earth because while we are in quarantine, we avoid contaminating the environment and while we do not contaminate the environment the Earth responds to us with clean air," adds senior Wendy Cuevas.

Although we are away from school, this doesn't mean we can't do something for the planet or that we can't join the movement where we are. Senior Wilmer Paniagua Taveras mentions, "Everyone should be involved in Earth day because this is our planet, together we need to take care of our nature, plants and animals. If we don’t do it, who will?"

Some easy solutions that everyone can do where they are include, "use products that can be reused, avoid leaving the appliances that we don't use plugged in, reduce waste, buy wisely, since we sometimes buy things that we will not use, recycle, and get rid of trash instead," says senior Melanie Fernandez.

Furthermore, high schoolers can definitely contribute where they are. Sophomore Natacha Tapia says, "High schoolers can make posts on social media about the climate change, they can also join a march, use less water, use less electricity and plant trees."

The idea is that we come together as a community and build the future together, even as a high school community. Yaira Paredes adds, "At Kingsbridge we can work for the good of the planet like building a garden with trees, taking care of it, as a sample of protecting our world. After all, "we have to work together to make it better, we should talk about this a lot more and consider it like a pandemic now, before it becomes too late because we don’t know what is coming," concludes junior Aissatou Diallo.

Some students decided to make physical posters, although others went on for digital versions. Regardless of the format, their creativity is reflected on each poster; moreover, their posters reflect that we still have Kingsbridge students that care for the environment, Earth and the future.

(11/15/19) — During October, the Mundology Club did more than just meet and have fun, we promoted student leadership and care for our community and our city!

There are millions enslaved in the world today. More than ever before in human history and 1% of victims are ever rescued, so we took a stand! We went to Manhattan on a march for freedom and marched for those who are enslaved. "Being at this march was a great experience. It helped me see that the world is really damaged but although it's damaged we can repair it by collaborating with other people. After the march, I was walking and some people came to ask me about a poster that I was carrying at the march and then I decided to keep it, this made me feel happy because it shows me that people are willing to take actions and make a change. Overall this march was really good and I would do it again if I had the opportunity," says our club treasurer, Jesus Tátis-Sánchez.

We also joined the New York City Parks and went to Fort Playground Park (on the other side of the Jerome Reservoir) to do awesome activities like leaf raking, plant trees and clean the park! How cool is that? The best about this was that all the leaves were collected to be converted into compost. "There are beautiful places where people go and enjoy. In the Mundology club, we enjoy taking care of those amazing places that we use. Making good actions for the environment is something we can consider because there is nothing more beautiful than sitting at the park, looking at a sunset thinking about how hard your day was but how beautiful it is ending. By cleaning the park and plant trees, we get to appreciate it more," says our club president, Jorge Fernandez.

October is internationally known as the Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and we also couldn't miss out! We took the initiative to wear a pink shirt on the last day as we joined in awareness. The idea didn't stop with our club, but we extended it to all school staff so they could join the cause too. Furthermore, we actually designed and created our own cards with uplifting messages that we sent to people that have cancer across the country. "Many people are unaware of the problem that cancer is and they just think about it as a normal disease when it is something serious. Many people die of cancer in the world so we have to make people be aware of it and make them do something against that horrible disease. That's why we joined this cause and created motivational cards for those battling with cancer," says our club historian, Sadia Sultana.

We want to end by saying how much we truly appreciate and love our former principal, Mr. Gagstetter. During October he moved on to follow his passion. We wish him the best in his new position. Thank you Mr. G