One Golden Pond gives RUHS students hands-on opportunity
Enviroscape owner Mike Garcia, RUHS teacher Gillian Moberg and RUHS senior Halle Bender stand before the school’s sustainable pond and gardening system. Photo
For about a year, Redondo Union High School’s newest educational resource, a fish-stocked freshwater pond, has given students an opportunity to experiment with a fish- and plant-stocked ecosystem. And last spring, it became a short-term home for two unexpected guests.
“A pair of mallards took residence,” said AP Environmental Sciences teacher Gillian Moberg. “Nothing could budge them.”
For about a week and a half, the migrating ducks entertained Moberg’s classes, and in the process, introduced a wild variable to the pond,. But the pond itself helped Moberg solve a problem of economics.
Moberg’s students would typically take field trips to Marina del Rey, working with the Friends of the Ballona Wetlands, when studying freshwater environments. But as classes grew, it was difficult to find time and funding for field trips for the more than 100 APES students.
So Moberg hatched a plan: Instead of going to wetlands, why not bring a wetland system to RUHS?
RUHS teacher Gillian Moberg and senior Halle Bender check on plant experiments at the school’s vertical hydroponic garden. Photo
After months of searching, Moberg was connected with Enviroscape and sustainable-landscape contractor Mike Garcia. Though the pond was constructed through a $15,000 grant from Chevron. Garcia secured the donation of a pump and filtration system from manufacturer OASE and threw in a vertical hydroponic garden.
“Past generations have not been as frugal with growing practices, but now younger generations are very interested in the technologies,” Garcia said. “We’ll never be over the drought, so how will you feed millions of people with little water?”
The pond is a mostly-closed system. Goldfish in the pond produce waste that fertilizes the vegetable garden and surrounding plants. The water is filtered and clarified by a pump and UV filtration system, which separates lighter waste and heavier waste and diverts it. Students are the dogleg in the system, feeding the fish and occasionally adding new water.
“It takes some input, but not much,” Moberg said.
Currently, APES students are observing a difference in growth rates between hydroponically-grown plants, floating in the pond, and soil-grown plants.
“I’ve never [previously] looked into growing aquaponically, but it’s a new way to save land for agriculture, We won’t be getting any new land,” said RUHS senior Halle Bender, who noted that aquaponically-grown plants appear to germinate slightly faster than traditionally-grown plants. “Using lakes and ponds to grow crops is an interesting innovation.”
Students are also learning about methods used to monitor water pollution, about the nitrogen cycle and changes in nutrients over time, and about the steps involved in wastewater treatment.
“Touring [water treatment] facilities, looking at huge UV banks, is not as personal or accessible as opening it up and looking at the parts,” Moberg said. “I’d never give up field trips – it’s different to see the scale, especially for students who want to be engineers. But no other facility is going to let you open up equipment and tinker.”
Giving students hands-on learning opportunities is part of RUHS’s plan for their success beyond the classroom.
“We want them to be innovators…if they go into those career pathways, they already have a background in those skills,” RUHS Principal Jens Brandt said.
“When we went to school, we were used to the structured classroom: lecturing, taking notes, and regurgitating things onto a test,” Brandt said. “But our students appreciate taking ownership of the process…it means something to them, because they see it happening, rather than reading a text or watching a movie.”
By Moberg’s estimation, this is just the beginning.
“You imagine it, and we can do it; this is the first project of the year, and from this other questions will come up that we can continue to investigate,” Moberg said. “Someday, we’ll have several trials to see what plants work best in this system.”
As for now, even personal testing by Moberg isn’t completely foolproof.
“Just this weekend, I put dill in [the vertical garden] and it promptly died,” Moberg said. “Again, more questions worth answering.”