The centerpiece of every CAP class with Cottonwood Institute is the end-of-semester Action Project, which gives students the opportunity to address a local environmental issue of their choosing. Action Projects allow students to synthesize the lessons they’ve learned in class and on their field trips, and use them to create meaningful change in their communities. And that change is being recognized, as two of this semester’s Action Projects recently received mention in the Boulder Daily Camera!
Centaurus students educating about emerald ash borer
Photo: Cliff Grassmick
CAP students at Centaurus High School used their Action Project to educate the Boulder community about the encroaching threat of the emerald ash borer, creating a giant model of the invasive bug and teaching shoppers at the Boulder County Farmers Market how to identify infected trees in their own neighborhoods. They also gave away about 250 conifer seedlings that they had collected during their service project at Cal-Wood Education Center, which can be planted to help replace unhealthy ash trees.
The Daily Camera spoke to the Centaurus CAP students about the project and everything else they learned this semester. Check it out here!
New Vista celebrating 25 years as non-traditional high school
Photo: Matthew Jonas
Boulder’s New Vista High School, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2019, was also the site of the first ever CAP class all the way back in 2003. So what better way to celebrate New Vista’s commitment to innovative programming than by highlighting this year’s CAP students? Sophomore Lindsey Machado was photographed handing out copies of “The Tale of a Fairy and a Frog, a Frog and a Fairy,” which she and her classmates wrote, illustrated, and published as part of their Action Project! CAP students put on an educational fair at Columbine Elementary School to share everything they have learned this semester with a group of first graders.
You can read more about their action project here and read the Daily Camera article here. Stay tuned for an alumni spotlight on (brand new alumna) Lindsey coming soon!
