Student perspective
By Kayla Tran, University of Washington Student, Renton High School Graduate,
2018-2019 Project Feed 1010 Ambassador
Crawfish, bean sprouts, and models of the water cycle and land erosion have lived on as my happiest memories of elementary school.
I moved to the United States when I was 7 years old as an English language learner. From second to third grade, my goal in school was to simply be able to communicate with teachers and interact with my classmates. The learning journey felt slow as I failed my spelling bees and felt socially secluded through 2 years of elementary. However, I quickly found joy at school when learning and keeping crawfish as class pets, seeing the growth stages of bean sprouts, and building our own water cycles. I soon learned that these projects were what we know as science.
Those projects allowed me to personally experiment and get hands-on with the plants, animals, and models that were brought into the classroom. As an elementary student speaking little English, I came to the conclusion that a) science is fun and that b) I love it. Looking back, I realize that my connection with science was due to the fact that it is a subject that knows no language barrier.
Years later, my love for science stood… until chemistry arrived. Unit analysis, balancing equations, and the memorization of charges and ions were unusual topics, calling for different ways of learning than I was used to. Rather than extracting DNA from strawberries, we were learning atomic theories. Instead of exploring osmosis, we were pairing the elements. The unfamiliarity drew me one more conclusion: c) science is fun, but difficult to apply. I suddenly asked myself, “is science really worth learning?”.
I found my answer when I interned at the Institute for Systems Biology for their Project Feed 1010 (PF1010) program. This program was created based on the idea that sustainable farming will be the solution to our food security crisis as a result of the traditional resource-consuming agricultural methods. Among several sustainable agriculture methods, aquaponics are the focus. Structured as a short-course over the duration of 6 weeks, the goal of the program is to lead students through the coursework of systems biology, sustainable agriculture, and science research. These areas of knowledge were taught by many activities involving experiential learning, also known as hands-on learning. What stood out to me in this program was that, before diving into the coursework, the importance of what we were learning was highlighted. Through reading and discussion, me, along with 6 other interns gained an understanding of the resource consumption of various farming practices, ranging from irrigation to hydroponics. With the help of our program managers, who are also scientists and teachers, we saw the potential consequences of our continual use of unsustainable farming practices amidst our resource-depleting planet and a growing population. The issues of water shortage, land degradation, and access to healthy foods interconnect with deeper challenges for poor populations, including a lowered quality of life. These challenges, on the surface of what seem like social issues, presents us with the question, “how can we sustainably feed an exponentially growing population without depleting resources and degrading land?”
PF1010 taught us that the solution to this question is science. By implementing sustainable farms such as aquaponics (a largely self-sustaining system that combines hydroponics and aquaculture), we can sustainably feed the growing population. As we went ahead to build and maintain our own aquaponic and hydroponic systems, we used an active application of knowledge on agricultural methods with the food insecurity crisis in mind. It is important to note that, in that moment, my connections between biological science research and social science were made. While researching and hands-on maintaining our systems, we used tomato seeds from the Tomatosphere program as an example of citizen science. Not only were we able to learn from our systems, but we were able to collect and submit the plant data to help investigate the effects of outer space on seed germination. We soon found the variable of outer space on seed germination to be relevant as we began the project of researching what agriculture would look like on Mars. After being given the size of our hypothetical Martian cohort and gender composition, me and my partner selected our own variety of foods we thought were best to grow based on nutritional value and growth difficulty. With the consideration of the Martian environment and atmosphere in mind, we used our new knowledge of sustainable food systems to brainstorm how our foods would grow, and how the food system would work. Despite starting this project with the same coursework and being given the same guidelines, each small group presented unique brainstorms of their Martian food systems. This goes to show that even when it comes to our real life food security crisis, the solutions that science offers comes in numbers. In other words, our knowledge can be so easily applicable that we can each come up with different solutions.
We were given the chance to show just how unique our ideas can be in our integration plans, where we brought what we learned in the short course to lead food sustainability projects in our own communities. With the support of each other through our monthly Google Hangout meetings and email contact, as well as resources such as an aquaponic system, I was inspired to make a lasting difference. My integration plan was carried out at school, and I decided that its theme would be water conservation and pollution awareness. Part one of this project was setting up a Back to the Roots aquaponic system in the classroom where it was used as a model of sustainable farming during the water and soil unit. Because I was in charge of the system, it was me who would troubleshoot the system as we encountered issues of smell and water clarity. With the help of my partner and the PF1010 team, we discussed adding snails and reevaluating water chemistry. Through troubleshooting, the workings of the biological system were clear to me, and I realized I was utilizing the skills of systems biology.
Part two of my plan was to build a rain garden in our courtyard as an effort to give students green space and to reduce stormwater pollution. A student forum was arranged to inform students about the impact of pollutants on aquatic life in the Puget Sound. The event also invited student input on how they would want the space to look like. A draft of the construction plan was eventually created by an architect, whose work would start this school year with the help of the new cohort of environmental science students.
I feel that both parts of my project have been able to leave a lasting influence on my school community. Not only did I get to be an example for other science students to connect with their community by using coursework in their service, but I learned a lot about the value of science too. I gained confidence using science knowledge to problem solve and most importantly, to serve the environment.
With the valuable experience of PF1010, I realized that science learning was no longer seen as a subject contained in the classroom, but one that’s meant to be explored in our environment and community. This serves as a reminder that, not only has science helped me overcome the boundary of language, but it pushes us to get out of the self-imposed boundaries of growth we create when we are stuck. This leads me to the last two conclusions: d) though it seems that science is difficult to apply, we use it more than we know and e) science is worth learning!
—Kayla Tran