Keystone Oaks empty space becomes green classroom

First-year teacher Maddie Kay and her students have transformed a littleused storage room at Keystone Oaks High School into a green learning space to teach environmental science.

Ms. Kay, who also teaches chemistry, said she started the year teaching environmental science in a more traditional way, lecturing and having students take notes.

One day, she gave the students a free period and talked with them about the direction of the class.

“I realized these kids would want to do something more hands-on,” she said, and that’s when she came up with the idea to create a “green space” for learning.

“We’re ecstatic about what Maddie has done,” high school principal Keith Hartbauer said. “She’s made learning relevant for a lot of kids who would have shut down otherwise. This group of kids seems to do really well with these types of activities.”

The storage room, which is almost as large as a classroom, has a windowed ceiling and was used as a greenhouse at one point about 20 years ago.Butwhenshefirstdiscovered it, Ms. Kay said, it was in bad shape with chipped paint, a nonworking sink and science materials more than two decades old.

Ms. Kay’s class cleaned and painted the room and students from the school’s wood shop class made a table for it.

She is using the room to teach students about the science of plants, including aquaponics, which combines the raising of fish with the cultivating of plants in water. The fish provide nutrients and fertilizer to the plants.

Ms. Kay did her student teaching at the Fanny Edel Falk Laboratory School at the University of Pittsburgh, which has a large aquaponics system.

At Keystone Oaks, the students are raising mosquitofish, a small fish. In largescale aquaponics operations, Ms. Kay said, large fish like tilapia are farmed.

In December, students planted herbs such as basil, chives and oregano in traditional soil beds as well as in an aquaponics bed.

Inadditiontolearninghow to care for plants, Ms. Kay said, the class did a unit on water recycling and conservation. In the room, some plants are being watered with drip-style irrigation using tubes, and some are being watered with subsurface irrigation using water bottles.

“It’s just nice to have a different experience,” senior Domenic Nerone said of the class, which is an elective.

“Everyone takes core classes, but not everyone gets to see things about the environment,” he said.

“I like that it’s hands on,” senior Logan Cipcic added.

Ms. Kay said the goal is to have other classes use the room, and she will collaborate with other departments.

Students will make a 3-D model of the room in a computer-aided drafting class, and another class will use a 3-D printer to make netting to be used for a larger aquaponics system. Ms. Kay said she also wants to collaborate with the wood shop class to make an herb wall.

“Our goal is to use the room for hands-on activities,” she said.