Grade: 9 - 12 Science Classes

Teacher Name: Haley Bilbray

Description and purpose of grant:

I am asking for a total of 5 hydroponic vertical gardening towers and 4 countertop hydroponic gardens to support a chemistry project called “An eARTh Adventure Awaits”. In alignment with CISD’s value of Great Teaching and our campus’s desire to increase real-world learning, we will be using these gardens to increase the number of opportunities chemistry students have to use hands-on learning to address a societal need of food security. While we have an outdoor garden, these indoor hydroponic gardening towers are necessary due to the ability to operate year-round and in all weather conditions. 

As the chemistry portion “An eARTh Adventure Awaits” of the school-wide project “For E@rth’s Sake”, my learners will design & implement a hydroponics or aquaponics system to successfully grow flowers, herbs, or vegetables. Learners will learn & practice taking pH & TDS measurements, collecting/analyzing data, & sharing data in an engaging way. Growing methods will then be compared. Some of the harvest will be used to create paint pigments from these "natural" sources in advertisements for the For Earth’s Sake event. Remaining harvest will possibly be distributed where there is food insecurity in the community.

An Adventure Awaits project uses different roles within the chemistry classroom to look through lenses of an overarching issue of food insecurity. English branch is made of writers/journalists, documenting the journey & comparing/contrasting different approaches. The Biology branch will adjust & adapt variables in the aquaponics system to maintain homeostasis in the ecosystem. Chemistry branch grows flowers, herbs, & vegetables with hydroponic chemistry used three ways (1: send growing method conclusions/successes/challenges to engineering, 2: design/implement lab procedure using harvest to make paint pigments for art , 3: send harvest at benchmark points).  Art branch will turn the chemistry pigment into paint to generate artwork aligned with For Earth’s Sake event. Geography/History branch looks at insecurity over time & around the world, then narrow down where in our community could benefit from our harvests. Business branch will create a social media campaign & advertisement about the food insecurity issue & potentially get data from the community members to choose locations. Finally, our school will donate any remaining harvest at points throughout the year to the different locations, forming lasting community connections.

We plan on implementing these gardens primarily in the Honors Chemistry classroom. Some of these gardens will also go to AP Chemistry, AP Environmental Science, AP Biology, and Honors Biology classes to facilitate other research questions and data collection in the needs of that content. Groups will regularly use these gardens in their lessons & explorations of content. The gardens will benefit all students on campus, because the gardens will also be accessible during Flex Friday sessions for learners not enrolled in the research classes to learn the hydroponics processes. 

Learners will be impacted academically in classes as well as socially through possible community partnerships, authentic & real-world audiences. They will have hands-on data collection & lab procedure practice. The project will be implemented over the year, with benchmarks throughout for branch milestones. 

While we might not be doing For E@rth’s Sake after this school year, we can use the same supplies to explore material science, food chemistry, environmental chemistry, sustainability, or biochemistry. I also see partnerships growing between middle schools/elementary schools & our school to create growing systems for other schools.

In the event my grant is not fully funded, this is minimum amount I would need to get started on this project: $1500