ECH2O Academy held their annual team-building field trip on September 16, 2016.  All three grade levels got together for group activities at the high school and near-by 9th Street Park.  Activities included partner interviews, card towers, and a photo scavenger hunt!

Our Monterey Bay Aquarium field trip on January 18, 2017 included 88 students from 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grades.  We like Monterey, but it was a long trip home in the rain.  (Wait, there was rain in California finally?  Yay!!)

I can't believe it is February of 2016 already!  We've been busy working on presenting to the Benicia Sustainability Commision, resumes, and preparing some students for our upcoming Skills USA Competition this month.  Somewhere in there we even fit in a trip to the California Academy of Sciences! We are looking forward to sharing all that we've been working on this year at the BHS annual Showcase Night.  (Formerly known as Open House and 8th Grade Parent Night.)

Most recently we added our new mascot Rosie the ECH2O Gecko.  She is shy, but perhaps she will come out for Open House!  Below are a few pictures from 2016! 

I can't believe I haven't posted yet this year - we have been so busy!!!  I'm getting back on top of my websites though, so hopefully you won't have to wait so long for an update next time.  A quick list of what we've been up to so far this year: 

• We partnered with BMS and Solano County Resources Conservation District to have our high schoolers help teach the middle schoolers about water conservation and the Suison Marshes. 
• The juniors have been working hard in the garden to finish our water capture system.  We had the tanks last year, but now we are working on getting the pumps installed so we can store even more water and then gravity feed the garden! 
• Many of our students participated in Coastal Clean-Up this September.
• We are working on our Coffee fundraiser.
• We are headed to Berkeley this Tuesday to take a campus tour and visit several labs working on cutting edge research. 
• Skills USA is ramping up, and it looks like we will have students interested in competing this year! 

We look forward to a great 2016 with a trip to the California Academy of Sciences, our first Skills USA competitions, and so much more!  

​Have a great Thanksgiving. :) 

It's been a busy 3rd quarter for us!  Some notable highlights include:

• A team of teachers were invited to attend the CTEonline workshop for the second year in a row.  They are currently working together to create another integrated project for the academy. 
• Academy teachers attended the Educating For Careers Conference and came back with lots of great ideas! 
• Registration is on-going and our numbers for next year are looking good!
• We've had great turn outs for the Benicia Tree Foundation tree planting. 
• As part of the GLOBE program, UC Berkeley graduate students came and presented their research to our 10th and 11th grade classes. 
• Our Skills USA Chapter has reached the Quality Chapter Level! 
• We are planning for the BHS Showcase night - we can't wait to share our projects with the community on March 26th from 6 pm to 8 pm.  Look for our students in the red brick quad!
• We are allowing 8th graders to register for a 9th grade science class.  While it won't officially be a part of the academy, we will be incorporating them in to some of our academy events. 

We've been busy implementing lots of new projects and ideas in the ECHO Academy:

• Skills USA is off to a good start, and the group is working on organizing events that benefit all members.  Our plan is to observe the competition this year, as the students wanted to be prepared to start it off correctly next year.  Our goal is to organize more volunteer events, more social interactions (we are starting our first ever Secret Santa), and guest speakers to help students prepare for their future careers.
• We are working on implementing the different stages of a grant we received to help improve climate and water education.  We are working on arranging guest speakers, the students have been working on the solar and water catchment systems in the garden, and the teachers will be working on curriculum together very soon. 
• We are trying out a new fundraiser this Saturday - a Pancake Breakfast at Applebee's.  If you happen to see this post, come by between 8 am and 9:30. :) 

We are very excited to be starting a Skills USA chapter for any interested ECH2O Academy students. Skills USA is a national organization, whose goal is to help students prepare for their future career.  It does this through encouraging interaction with local businesses and experts, community service, social acitvities, leadership training, professional development curriculum, and competitions. If you are curious to learn more, click on the following link: www.skillsusa.org 

It's been such a busy first month of school, that we haven't been able to update the website till now!  We are very excited to see all that the students have been able to accomplish in such a short period of time. 

Some of our happenings so far:

• A group of our students are starting a Skills USA team, with hopes of competing in spring.  Skills USA helps students prepare for their future careers and we are looking forward to learning more about the program throughout the year. 
• We participated in the E-Colors training program to help students learn their strengths, potential limiters, and how to work more effectively as a team. 
• We had our first large service project of the year - the students participated in the annual Coastal Clean-Up. 

The school year is almost over and we have some exciting news to report. We received the grant for next year's solar power and water catchment project!  We are also very proud of our seniors graduating next week, and our incoming class of seniors - several of whom have already secured their internships for next year.  Finally, we are happy to report that we are getting close to confirming a training with ecolors for teh fall.  If you are curious about what will be coming you can visit www.equilibria.com. 

It's only been a few weeks, but May has been a busy month.  Just this month the students have:

• Worked in the field with the Solano County Resource Conservation District
• Worked on our structures in the the garden to help improve their sustainability
• Set up a wind turbine
• Had our end of the year barbecue, where we were able to meet some of our incoming sophomores - we are excited to have more sign ups than ever before!!

The staff has been busy as well, working on grants to keep our academy funded in to the future, and planning new training opportunities for our students in the fall!  We are excited to announce that we will be bringing the Skills USA curriculum and club on to our campus next year!

We can't believe it's April and Spring Break already!  We are getting ready for our final spring events - the spring project and our annual celebration!  The spring project this year is building a wind turbine, and we will celebrate it's completion by having our annual academy barbecue in the garden on Bike to School Day - Wednesday May 7th. 

We have already begun planning for next year, and the academy coordinators have been busily working on 3 different grants to help keep the academy sustainable for many years to come!

We will get pictures of our completed build in to the next update!