Unified Education Strategy Grants

Anderson Valley Unified School District

On this page you will find...

• Grantee Information
• Opportunities and Obstacles
• Diversion Successes
• Lessons Created
• Partnerships
• Program Contacts

Grantee Information

Anderson Valley Unified School District (AVUSD) is located in rural Booneville in southern Mendocino County. The district includes a preschool and an elementary school, a junior/senior high school, an alternative high school, and adult education school. The total student body population is approximately 650 students.

Through the Unified Education Strategy (UES) grant, the district wished to establish standards-aligned units with cross-age service-learning activities. The district’s goals for the pilot program focused on reducing waste through education and incentives, and increasing recycling and composting efforts. The students were actively involved in problem-solving, planning, and providing recommendations to the school administrators and school board.

The instructional team consisted of one sixth-grade teacher and one eighth-grade teacher, with one ninth-grade teacher and the district’s bilingual and special projects coordinator providing assistance to the team. The team’s efforts included:

• Sixth-grade students participated in lessons that incorporated English/language arts (reading about ecosystems and components and food web roles, specialized vocabulary, writing multi-paragraph essays), mathematics (data recording, using ratios to calculate percentages, data analysis), science (investigation and experimentation, renewable vs. nonrenewable resources), and history-social science (read and discuss history of garbage management and compare to current practices).
• Eighth-grade students participated in lessons that incorporated English/language arts (writing summaries, preparing and giving speeches), mathematics (probability and statistics), and science (states of matter, Law of Conservation).

Opportunities and Obstacles

Anderson Valley Unified School District chose not to participate in year two of the grant program. The district explained its decision to discontinue participation in its final grant report to CIWMB:

“This is a wonderful program and resulted in student learning as well as waste reduction for the district. It has been challenging because of unclear grant expectations for the staff: desired results for the lesson plan format, required time to meet with the consultants, etc., but the consultants have been very supportive and patient. The configuration of the staff presented some problems in terms of their willingness to participate and perhaps their understanding of their role in the program. Next year we plan to continue with the waste audit (Campus Needs Assessment) and continue to try to improve our waste production and handling.

The format of the grant, with one year for planning and the following year for implementing the proposals is difficult because of the change in students participating from one year to the next, and because of the natural desire to immediately begin implementation of the solutions or improvements.”

Diversion Successes

During the first year of the UES grant cycle, Anderson Valley Elementary School and Anderson Valley Junior/Senior High School chose the following diversion-related activities:

• The sixth- and eighth-grade students performed the campus needs assessments, which allowed these students to determine the amount of waste generated at the two schools.
• Following the assessment, these students attended an “Eco-Council” meeting, where they worked together in small groups to propose solutions to the problems their assessment had brought to light.
• The teams of students and staff worked to refine the solutions into a proposal that was presented to the AVUSD school board at its March 2004 meeting.
• The junior/senior high school worked to develop a sustainable recycling program.

Lessons Created

The campus needs assessment (Adobe PDF, 87 KB) developed by the Anderson Valley team supported many grade-level standards in science and the other core disciplines. The sixth-grade investigation addressed the following learning objectives from English/language arts, math, science and history/social science.

The eighth-grade science teacher found aligning physical science standards to a solid waste audit a challenging task. The team worked very hard to integrate these standards with the overall goals of the campus needs assessment.

Partnerships

• Mendocino Solid Waste Management Authority

Program Contacts

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Last updated: November 01, 2007