On February 5th, we had a presentation of the Farm Lab during our club meeting. And on February 19th, we went to the Farm Lab, to visit and, for some, be juges in the Salad War!
On February 5th, Julie Burton came to our club to present the Farm Lab.
On February 19th, ecorotarians went to the Farm Lab to visit and, for some, be part of the jury of the salad war! Our park ranger from the San Dieguito Park, Alejandro, was there too.
Farm Lab is an innovative and valuable educational component of EUSD. It’s a unique learning space on a 10-acre property, graded dirt lot, and gifted to district by land developers.
Farm Lab is actually one property that houses several separate entities all working all under the umbrella of sustainability and environmental stewardship.
The EUSD Farm Lab site includes:
• An educational campus
• A one-acre hands on educational garden
• Four acres of dedicated fields for growing crops for EUSD school lunches
• Three-quarter-acre community garden
As the name suggests, one of the main components on the Farm Lab site is the organic certified farm. Growing your own fruits and vegetables is ideal for health and wellness and reducing your footprint. It’s also experiential learning opportunities, and leads to Increased consumption of fruits and vegetables, willingness to try new foods, increased awareness of food systems (shopping local, seasonal, informed food choices).
It’s not farming or gardening classes. It’s more about agriculture and how it connects to sustainability and environmental stewardship.
DREAMS Campus - engaged, thinking critically, designing, problem-solving.
- Indoor and outdoor learning spaces
- One, two, three, and five-day learning experiences
- All 5400 EUSD students participate annually
- Project-Based Learning that supports NGSS
- Builds deeper understanding of sustainability and EUSD’s environmental stewardship initiatives.
Students learn Next Generation Science using the DREAMS approach to education and engaging in experiential science lessons that are centered around nutrition and the environment.
Real World Problem Solving with some challenges as ‘What is the best design for the new D&R rooms at Farm Lab?’ ‘What is the best design for a living playground?’
Students met with experts: design, maker spaces, budgets, customers, and commercial purchasing to ask questions. With a Real budget!
“You have to know why.” The real-world problem solving extends learning well beyond the task!
The farm uses Israeli rain barrels for water conservation and innovative design, and compost bins to divert all fruit and veg scraps from central kitchen!
The Farm Lab wants to create an ecosystem where families can come and learn how to minimizes their footprint on the homestead.
Their goal is to continue to increase and enhance opportunities for students to discover environmental and sustainability challenges and ideate solutions. They are growing a generation of change agents!
See pictures from Julie's presentation!
Learn more with those links:
Salad wars
Students have a mission to create the perfect salad dressing. The judges will decide! On February 19th some members of the jury were ecorotarians and Alejandro from the San Dieguito Park.
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Here is also a reportage about these "wars" from CBS8: