My Students

My students are extremely creative individuals. Trapped by the daily grind of required concepts and the stresses of exam preparations for both the IB and AP programs, it is a rare occasion for my environmental science students' creative and relaxed side to shine!

My students are natural born scientists and explorers.

They are also artists! They ask questions constantly, they want to learn, they crave new creative experiences, want to search for meaning, share their own experiences, and it is my job to facilitate and give them access to the knowledge, skills and canvas they need to get the answers they seek. Over 90% of my students (and the student body) receive free lunch and 94%+ of them are Latino. Virtually all of them live in a dense, complex urban setting plagued by violence and most have never been outside our city, even their neighborhood. Our school trips or experiences are usually the first and only exposures to nature, sitting on the grass, listening to birds and being outside. My students also thrive in practical settings with creative, real experiences. They're mostly visual/kinesthetic/auditory learners, and do best with hands-on, creative, artistic projects and labs, where scientific principles and creativity create learning.

My Project

My AP and IB students are required to learn and process a lot of content and skills throughout their course in preparation for their exams. Most of their projects and studies fall in two categories: empirical data collection via labs or experiments and secondly, artistic, content-based projects that tap their creative, service-learning side. My goal is to constantly find the best of both worlds. For years I wanted to start a fishing club. Start small, 5 poles, reels, a variety of hooks, bobbers, etc. However, we never had the opportunity to spend on an optional, extra curricular activity. What I hope to do is take the students out of the classroom, and show them a different appreciation of nature and spending time in it. Studying will never stops but we will have the opportunity to address topics like fisheries, urban aqua farming, sustainability yields and the aspect of fish and game in nature. I hope they will get motivated and inspired to do more exploration on their own!

Thanks to you and your generosity, students will be given the supplies to jump start one of the rarest form of learning- in nature and from nature.

I am looking forward to learning with them and exposing them to the process of fishing, forestry and fisheries. It will also give them a chance to reflect on food sourcing, sustainability and conservation in an urban watershed. And lastly, I hope they can learn to sometimes relax and get out of their overtly stressed brains in the classroom!