Wilson Early College Academy is a public high school located in Wilson, North
Carolina that offers mostly first generation college students and at-risk students an opportunity to graduate with both a high school diploma and an associate's degree with no out of pocket expenses in four or five years.
WECA has been an immense success with most students graduating and going on to a four-year university. WECA's Science department has big ideas and very little funding available. Students lead funded projects to support scientific investigations into areas of interest so that they can learn as big as they can dream!
My students have learned leadership through having them learn how to take responsibility for their actions, and how they go about this project. They have learned teamwork by assigning each individual in their group a role, and expecting them to fulfill it.
They have also learned many things about aquatic life through their intense research about what type of fish will work, their hardiness, and how to care for them.
In Their Own Words
Our main goal is to give students an opportunity to see and use the newest twenty-first technology. Through this project, students will be able to experience how to cultivate fish and various plants together. We will learn leadership skills, to be independent, and to learn how to care for different forms of life. We hope that we will eventually be able to take this concept to help in small scale farming that will support local food banks and possibly even small communities.
The aquaponics system has already allowed us to take responsibility over the well-being of this project. We have had to step up to the plate, in order to get this project up and running and available to future classes of students to come. We have worked very hard to figure out all of the complicated details, and how to make it work when we cannot.
When we first started developing this project, we wanted to include many groups of people. We were trying to think of something that could benefit both the college side and the high school students. As a result, we got together with the college's culinary program provide them with useful materials such as the fish and various plants we want to grow.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mr. Schaffer and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
