Community School Addresses Inequality and Climate Action Through New Education Model

The Third Option is highlighting a new school model at Millennial Tech Middle School in San Diego, CA.
Read about it on our blog, The Forebrain Underground.

SAN DIEGO, April 12, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Southeast San Diego's Millennial Tech Middle School (MTM), a new member of the community school coalition, is partnering with Groundwork San Diego and UCSD Center on Global Justice to offer a new public education model where children become the direct agents for change within their communities.

In the case of MTM, climate action will become the catalyst to reverse the more long-established climate of inequality continuing to stifle the communities along the Chollas Creek Watershed.

MTM will be converted into the epicenter of environmental education and a new model for schools of the future.

Upon completion, MTM will consist of:

• Upgraded indoor classrooms
• A four-acre outdoor EarthLab with innovative learning spaces
• A Climate Action Design Lab (Makerspace)

The Third Option supports this model. By connecting indoor formal methodology to outdoor experiential learning stations, the EarthLab will be transformed into a Climate Action Park.

• The EarthLab is an interdisciplinary learning environment. The problem of climate change requires the merging of many silos of understanding, in order to co-develop viable solutions; the EarthLab will provide the perfect opportunity to tear down these self-imposed obstacles to participatory democracy and co-develop a social model of interdependency that can extend well into the future.
• The EarthLab is a hands-on experiential learning tool. Traditional education is isolating; once people step outside whatever walls exist around them, and replace their non-experiential collection of secondhand information with real experiences, they will surely be drawn toward more holistic, inclusive solutions.
• The EarthLab is an economic asset. Beyond a cultural space, the EarthLab is meant to be a direct source of essential community needs. Divided into four zones of energy, water, food, and community, the school hopes to impact issues of sustainable energy, clean water, food insecurity, local unemployment, mental health and well-being, as well as the implied societal neglect of the Chollas Creek watershed and the people residing there.
• The EarthLab is a climate asset. Through the Climate Action Design Lab, MTM will harness the power of the EarthLab to empower the youth to achieve both social and climate justice, tackle educational inequality, and open up vocational employment opportunities within their community.

Media Contact:
Dimitry Morgan
619-730-7965 
[email protected] 

SOURCE The Third Option