Red Cloud Indian School has received a grant from the Toyota U.S.A. Foundation to prepare students to pursue college degrees and careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math through hands-on learning experiences for Lakota youth. This is the second consecutive grant for the school.
Red Cloud Indian School superintendent Ted Hamilton says it’s unusual to receive subsequent grants from the Toyota U.S.A. Foundation.
“We did a three-year grant that kind of beefed up our science program at the high school,” recalls Hamilton. “And through conversations…and they were so happy with us…they did something which is rare and they gave us a second grant. So, we’re starting the first year of a three-year grant process…which is two hundred and ten thousand across the three years. So, it’s seventy thousand per year.”
What impressed Toyota enough to award a second grant, says Hamilton, was the school’s development of its greenhouse.
“We built a thirty foot geodesic dome,” Hamilton explains, “which is a greenhouse that doesn’t require external heat sources. So we’re able to grow plants in the greenhouse, literally, throughout the winter. Last winter when we built it…in November…when we did our first test…which I think was in January or February we had a twenty-three degree below morning. It was up in the upper forties I the greenhouse on the same morning.”
Aminah Hassoun is an AmeriCorps volunteer who’s Red Cloud’s botany teacher and greenhouse coordinator. Hassoun says the greenhouse is a classroom, lab and playground for the students.
“They’re so excited to be in a setting that is not a classroom,” observes Hasseun, “where they’re allowed to touch things and to taste things…to pick up the dirt. And a huge water tank. And the kids seem to be really fascinated with this tank of water. And anytime I tell them…’If you look really closely you’ll see the little fish in there.’…they just go wild.”
But it’s not that the students are disinterested in traditional classroom learning, notes Hassoun.
“It just makes it very personal,” explains Hasseun. “If we’re building trellises or, you know, mixing soil…if I explain to them a little bit of the concept behind the science…and the practice of it and then have them do a hands-on project…they remember it.”
Ted Hamilton adds that engineers from the Colorado School of Mines and Technology are also fascinated by Red Cloud’s greenhouse. They’re currently exploring ways to duplicate smaller versions as a possible means for families across the Pine Ridge Reservation to grow their own food.
http://www.redcloudschool.org/