Support Urban Garden: The Effects of Pollution on Water- an enriching environmental awareness project for Latino Middle School Students

I’m a 6th grade teacher at public charter middle school located in Downtown, Los Angeles, predominantly serving low-income Latino students. The group of 6th grade teachers at my school and I would like to provide an enriching hands on experience activity for 78 students in order to enhance our Ecology Unit. Thus, we are planning to culminate our Ecology Unit with a gardening project to enrich our students environmental awareness. But in order to do so, we need your financial support to purchase some of the supplies: a water test kit, planter boxes, and seeds.

We feel that a gardening project would be beneficial to our low- income students, many of whom reside in Downtown, Los Angeles, and thus have limited access to gardens and healthy -fresh food. We feel that exposing our students to gardening would arm them with the tools necessary to start gardening at home and hopefully start eating healthier foods. We hope that this experience serve as a catalyst for change.

My Project

Please donate here: http://www.donorschoose.org/andrea

As students start the school garden, they will learn the importance of good nutrients for organisms to live and stay healthy. They will test different types of water (tap water from home and from school as well as treated water and filtered water). Once they test the water, they will talk about the different pollutants that could affect its pH balance. As students water sections of the garden with the tested water, they will be able to test the soil and keep observational notes. They will test if the quality of water affects the soil and if the quality of the soil affects the growth of the plant. Students will hopefully learn that clean water helps create healthy soil for plants to absorb good nutrients. This experience will provide students with hands on experience to have discussions for the different types of pollutants that are damaging our environment and think of habits they can change to help. In addition, we will link this experience/ experiment with their eating habits.

An urban garden will show first-hand the impact of providing good quality water and soil needed to produce when planting. Hence, students will learn how different pollutants affect our resources. As students become cognizant of the need of a clean environment in order to have good nutrients available, they will learn the importance of changing habits to help have a clean World. Moroever, students will learn the need for them to keep a healthy diet in order to have a healthy growth.

If you would like to help support this enriching hands on environmental awareness project as students investigate the effects of pollution on water and plants, please make a donation at: http://www.donorschoose.org/andrea

Contributions are tax-deductible and donors will hear back from the students.

This and all other projects at DonorsChoose.org have been submitted by public school teachers who seek resources that will help their students learn.

Sincerely,
–
Andrea K. Lee
Ed.M. ’10 l UCLA Teacher Education Program

We have been keeping busy meeting mentors and students! We are still in need of some more mentors!

Specifically recruiting, interviewing, and pairing mentors with high school students. So far we have paired half of our mentors with amazing students and we are in the process to start clearance (background check and TB tests – by law we need it since we’re speaking with minors). We are finishing pairing students and current mentors this week to get ready for our Launch event!

Our next step will be getting ready to rock this summer at our first EDGE-ucation Launch event, where mentors will meet their assigned students for the first time and get to mingle and make connections with other mentors, educators, as well as the EDGE-ucation Directors!

But there is still time, and you can still sign up to become an EDGE-ucation mentor for the summer! Remember that all we ask is to keep 3 hrs of face to face communication (that can be once a month or 3 times a month, depending on your schedule), and an additional 2 hrs of other communication (this includes email, phone, facebook, chat, etc, just keep tabs on your student and you can monitor their progress). You can meet with your student as well as other mentors and their student anywhere in the Bay Area and make an impact on a student’s life!