Vista Grande High School
Grants Awarded
Through our “Place in Time” outdoor recreation program, students will explore our region’s natural resources while connecting to their cultural heritage. At each site visit, students will learn about the cultural value of a natural resource over time, how that resource is being threatened in our time of climate crisis, and ways to look towards the past as we transition towards a more sustainable future. Students will connect with the cultural significance of natural resources and learn about the resiliency of indigenous land management systems.
The "Place in Time" outdoor recreation program aims to help students understand their region's natural resources and cultural heritage while fostering awareness of environmental threats during the climate crisis. By connecting students to indigenous land management systems and sustainable practices, the program aspires to cultivate a more sustainable future for both participants and the local community.
Vista Grande High School has created an educational system that is multi-cultural and multi-lingual, responding to the cultures, language, and heritages of our diverse student population. Vista Grande believes our students deserve an excellent and relevant education so that they are academically prepared for college, career, and leadership, secure in their identity, and healthy in body and mind. Students at VGHS benefit from a focus on equity, cultural resources and relevance, all of which are critical to the mission of the school. We believe in the power of youth voice. One recent accomplishment at VGHS includes the indigenous focus of the curriculum for all core content classes. During the last three school years, VGHS has revised our core content curriculum to integrate resources and content that make our curriculum relevant to our students’ home cultures and that highlights the contributions of indigenous people to the world and to our local communities. Additionally, VGHS has successfully developed a farm-to-table program through our 1-acre garden where students plan and plant their own produce and learn about regenerative agriculture practices. The garden also serves as an outdoor classroom available to all core classes for workshops in ecology, mathematics, art and more. In the last year, we integrated environmental and outdoor learning into each of our core classes, such that each class has at least one unit with a strong focus on environmental, farm, natural resource and/or the outdoors.