Santa Rita High School
Led by Joshua Ruddick, a certified Arizona Professional Educator in Earth Science, General Science and Biology, students at Santa Rita High School are paving the way for a sustainable future. As a Career and Tech Ed teacher with a specialization in sustainable agriculture and natural resource management, Mr. Ruddick will be using the Aquagrove system at the start of the 2017-18 school year. As part of his problem-based learning program and student-led agro-business (aka Santa Rita Sprouts), his classes will sell produce they’ve grown through Produce On Wheels Without Waste (POWWOW), a community-focused monthly pop-up farmer’s market that is responsible for distributing nearly 108k fresh produce boxes to families across Arizona.
Learning units in his classes are unique and cover many aspects of sustainable agriculture including but not limited to: Hydroponics, aquaponics, cold water fish, fish rearing, tree planting and environmental education. Recognized in the community and hand-selected by University of Arizona to participate in Power Panel’s Aquagrove pilot program, Santa Rita High students are gearing up to track and record valuable data regarding water quality, growth and quality of food produced in the Aquagrove system. While Mr. Ruddick continues to fuel students’ entrepreneurial spirits, his classes will use and share the data on a website and blog that they will create and manage on their own.