Dive Brief:
- Students at Cleveland City Schools in Tennessee have designed a self-sustaining aquaponic dome to help grow kale, turnips, and collard greens, in addition to breeding fish, at an orphanage in Miskito Village, Kisalaya, Nicaragua.
- Ten students traveled to Miskito to see their design in action, built with the help of donated building materials and money from local Tennessee businesses.
- “This project meshed personalized learning, project-based learning and inquiry-based learning,” Cleveland City Schools Director Martin Ringstaff told District Administration, noting that the project was largely student-driven.
Dive Insight:
The project got started as a simple, local engineering project, when teacher Ben Williams asked his students to turn a 55-gallon aquarium “into an aquaponic system to grow plants and fish.” The CEO of a local company, HATponics, sat on a panel that reviewed the students’ work, and he was so impressed he challenged them to design the aquaponic dome that was eventually created in Nicaragua.
Cleveland City Schools Director Martin Ringstaff tells District Administration that the project was student-driven, from top to bottom. “As we move into personalized and project-based learning at the district, this is the type of thing we should be doing more of in school,” he said, citing examples of having certain students take over the responsibility of the dome’s structural elements and others who were interested in biomedical and bioengineering taking on the fish and plant species. Students were also entirely responsible for fundraising, empowered to take full ownership over the project.
Personalized learning and real-world learning scenarios are becoming more of a trend in districts across the U.S. In the state of Vermont, a new mandate requires that all students in grades 7-12 conceptualize and execute a personalized plan (PLP) that touches on their own interests, with the idea that they’ll be more motivated learners in the classroom. PLPs have also caught the interest of powerful organizations and businesses like the Gates Foundation and Facebook.
