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At the Urban Assembly School for Green Careers, students are learning to retrofit buildings to make them more energy efficient.
It's just one of the ways the new high school, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, is preparing students for green industry jobs.
“Before, I didn’t notice how much sustainability affects us all,” ninth-grader Nailah Guerra said. She enjoys her new school because of the personalized attention she receives and because she has always been an “outdoors person.”
Green Careers opened on the Brandeis High School Campus last month, and has 100 students in its freshman class. It is one of four schools recently designated as demonstration sites for new approaches to Career and Technical Education, modeling innovative approaches to preparing students for 21st century careers. It is also the first school in the country to train students for green careers.
Student schedules at the new school are far from typical. Instead of separate science and government courses, students take an interdisciplinary course called “community and sustainability” that prepares them for Regents exams in both subjects as they study the science and civics behind environmental issues.
As the students tend the school’s garden in a gardening elective class, they study topics ranging from pollination to food chains. And in a cooking elective called “sustainable eating,” students examine eating practices within scientific and social contexts.
The school’s courses combine crucial skills and content to create hands-on learning projects, so that students learn while gaining practical experience. The school has re-imagined how classrooms work in other ways. Students get regular feedback in conversations with their teachers about their performance in class; they work with their teachers to develop goals along with a plan for reaching those goals.
Principal Alexandra Rathmann-Noonan said the school prepares students for the workforce by giving them experience in fast-moving environments that require them to take initiative and utilize a variety of resources.
“We want our students to learn to think differently about what is possible when they leave school,” she said.
Rathmann-Noonan explained that the school developed its non-traditional instructional model to ensure that teachers can reach all their students—25% of whom receive special education services, and 20% of whom are English Language Learners.
“We can’t teach in traditional ways and be successful,” she said. “The kids tell us how it is working and we listen to them. Really serving their needs is what pushes us.”
“This school is at the cutting edge of innovation,” said Gregg Betheil, Senior Executive for Career and Technical Education at the DOE. “We spent a lot of time talking about what ‘green’ means, and about helping kids make the right choices about their post-secondary options.”
Fifteen-year-old student Anthony Donis, who dreams of creating his own community garden someday, said that after completing projects like a report on water quality he feels like he is “building a better world.”
"I love that I get to make new friends and meet new people here with similar interests," he said.