A program called Environmental Science Through Art, or ESTA, is creating a space for Latinx high school students in the Salinas Valley to learn science by doing art.
The program allows CSU, Monterey Bay graduate students and professors to collaborate together to come up with an environmental science curriculum. The graduate students then teach the curriculum to the children, and instead of taking a final exam, they are expected to turn what they learned into an art piece.
At McKinnon Elementary School, the students finished up a mural in July depicting the effects pesticides have on the surrounding agriculture and community.
In the center of the painting a pair of hands is holding vegetables like broccoli, tomatoes and carrots. Then, on the left and right sides of the mural are images of the different bugs that inhabit the local agricultural fields.
David Tapia is the program manager with Artist INK, the non-profit organization helping the ESTA program teach art. He pointed at the mural and described its imagery.
“There's, like, a story being told of the bad bugs and the good bugs. Then there's a message within the imagery which is the hands and all the vegetation and all the goodness you can see here in Salinas,” Tapia said.
The elementary school, where the mural will live forever, is a fitting location for the project. It overlooks a huge expanse of strawberry fields. Which is nothing compared to the 1.4 million acres of agriculture grown in the Salinas valley.
The ESTA Program is a part of an educational research grant and has been going on for the past three years. The students have created three previous art projects based on the science they have learned.
In the first year of the program they created a stop motion video about the impact of microplastics. The second year they created a puppet show about the impacts of climate change, and a bonus project where they learned about ways to use nature to make different types of art supplies.
Emily Ortiz Morales is the founder of Artist INK. She’s been with the ESTA program since its beginning.
“This program in particular empowers young leaders to learn about environmental issues and then take that information and use arts as a vehicle to raise awareness and amplify the issues of their community while also empowering them to take that leadership,” Ortiz Morales said.
Helping Latinx students achieve a career as an artist is one goal of the program. But some students have also found a passion for a career in STEM. Paulina Cortez is one of those students.
“I learned more about the environment and like the impact that different things have had on it, and the negative effects like pesticides like from plastic and how it harms our world, like in the future cause I want to go into STEM so I can help reduce that,” Cortez said.
Environmental science is not a state standard required in high school curriculum, and neither is art. ESTA is creating a new method of learning that bridges that gap for high school students throughout the state.
Enid Baxter-Ryce practices the curriculum in her own classroom at CSU, Monterey Bay. She also helped start the program.
“It feels more frightening than having a very prescriptive curriculum or standing up in front of the room and lecturing. Sometimes, I feel like I don't know what's gonna happen in class. I don't know what we're gonna figure out, but it's a really fun way to stay excited,” Baxter-Ryce said.
Baxter-Ryce said the scientific learning experience should be creative, inquiry driven, and accessible to all.
An exhibition of the students' work over the last three years will be presented to the public in the next couple of months. Because the program is grant funded there is no way to know if it will continue in the future.
But, Artist INK hopes to use what they have learned from this program to grow and expand this organization. And, CSUMB contributors hope to change the way educators engage students in agricultural communities about issues that pertain to them.
More information about the ESTA program and Artist INK can be found here.
