Laguna middle schoolers complete environmental stewardship internship
Seventh-grade students at Thurston Middle School have been getting an education in real-world issues, first learning outside the classroom and then presenting their findings.
Those enrolled in a semester-long STEAM course — which stands for science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics — recently looked into ways to reduce stormwater pollution.
The students visited a nearby water treatment facility, cleaned out storm drains on campus, and then gave presentations on the subject before city and school staff and industry leaders, including representatives from the Moulton Niguel Water District, at school on Tuesday.
'I think it gave our students a great lens of how powerful of a ripple effect this kind of work can have and the number of people that have similar goals in our community,' said Joseph Vidal, the principal of Thurston Middle School.
Students took turns stepping up to the podium and sharing parts of the project. It included a bit of levity, when a cartoonish representation of a person littering led to an encounter with a supernatural being from the sewer.
After the item struck the mutant-like creature in the head, it came up to the surface and used its laser vision to send a message to the individual littering.
'Sometimes, that's the right way into the middle-school mindset is to poke fun at it, but have a serious message that's also embedded in there,' Vidal said. 'I think our kids have done a great job with that.'
The activities came as part of a partnership with Poseidon Education, a collaboration Laguna Beach Unified School District officials said has been implemented in the coursework for a couple of years. Poseidon Education ran an internship, funded by the Orange County Public Works H2OC Stormwater Program, that culminated in the students delivering their proposals to reduce stormwater pollution in their community.
Patti Diaz, the chief executive and president of Poseidon Education, said the material helps to 'plant that seed' for the future and give students something meaningful in their education.
'They're going to remember doing this,' Diaz said. 'Even if they don't 100% remember all of the details of it, they'll remember that they had an experience. I bet you anything these kids have drain vision now, where they can't walk over a storm drain without noticing it.'
The learning process included a field trip to the South Orange County Wastewater Authority.
'They got to actually see the wastewater treatment plant,' Diaz said. 'That's not stormwater. We do try to differentiate — stormwater goes directly to the ocean and wastewater is from your drains and gets processed. They're going to definitely have a memory of that because of the smell.
'It's bringing these experiences and making them more real. … The water doesn't just go away. It goes somewhere. There's an impact. The trash that went down that drain… it went somewhere. It didn't just magically disappear.'
Gloria Harwood, the school district's coordinator of environmental literacy, said the district's goals include an emphasis on sustainability through effective environmental education.
Multiple student groups were honored before the City Council on Tuesday night, including a cohort of high school students that worked on a video for wildfire preparedness and elementary students who were recognized for their submissions in a water quality and wastewater awareness art contest.
Harwood said that taking education beyond the classroom, allowing students to 'get their hands dirty,' and giving them the tools to ask questions helps them to develop into 'change-makers within their community.'
'We have a lot of fun here,' Harwood added. 'We just want to make sure the students are connected to the planet as much as possible because it does have such an impact.'
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Los Angeles Times
09-05-2025
- Los Angeles Times
Laguna middle schoolers complete environmental stewardship internship
Having an ocean and wildland areas in close proximity to home tends to keep the environment top of mind for Laguna Beach residents. Seventh-grade students at Thurston Middle School have been getting an education in real-world issues, first learning outside the classroom and then presenting their findings. Those enrolled in a semester-long STEAM course — which stands for science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics — recently looked into ways to reduce stormwater pollution. The students visited a nearby water treatment facility, cleaned out storm drains on campus, and then gave presentations on the subject before city and school staff and industry leaders, including representatives from the Moulton Niguel Water District, at school on Tuesday. 'I think it gave our students a great lens of how powerful of a ripple effect this kind of work can have and the number of people that have similar goals in our community,' said Joseph Vidal, the principal of Thurston Middle School. Students took turns stepping up to the podium and sharing parts of the project. It included a bit of levity, when a cartoonish representation of a person littering led to an encounter with a supernatural being from the sewer. After the item struck the mutant-like creature in the head, it came up to the surface and used its laser vision to send a message to the individual littering. 'Sometimes, that's the right way into the middle-school mindset is to poke fun at it, but have a serious message that's also embedded in there,' Vidal said. 'I think our kids have done a great job with that.' The activities came as part of a partnership with Poseidon Education, a collaboration Laguna Beach Unified School District officials said has been implemented in the coursework for a couple of years. Poseidon Education ran an internship, funded by the Orange County Public Works H2OC Stormwater Program, that culminated in the students delivering their proposals to reduce stormwater pollution in their community. Patti Diaz, the chief executive and president of Poseidon Education, said the material helps to 'plant that seed' for the future and give students something meaningful in their education. 'They're going to remember doing this,' Diaz said. 'Even if they don't 100% remember all of the details of it, they'll remember that they had an experience. I bet you anything these kids have drain vision now, where they can't walk over a storm drain without noticing it.' The learning process included a field trip to the South Orange County Wastewater Authority. 'They got to actually see the wastewater treatment plant,' Diaz said. 'That's not stormwater. We do try to differentiate — stormwater goes directly to the ocean and wastewater is from your drains and gets processed. They're going to definitely have a memory of that because of the smell. 'It's bringing these experiences and making them more real. … The water doesn't just go away. It goes somewhere. There's an impact. The trash that went down that drain… it went somewhere. It didn't just magically disappear.' Gloria Harwood, the school district's coordinator of environmental literacy, said the district's goals include an emphasis on sustainability through effective environmental education. Multiple student groups were honored before the City Council on Tuesday night, including a cohort of high school students that worked on a video for wildfire preparedness and elementary students who were recognized for their submissions in a water quality and wastewater awareness art contest. Harwood said that taking education beyond the classroom, allowing students to 'get their hands dirty,' and giving them the tools to ask questions helps them to develop into 'change-makers within their community.' 'We have a lot of fun here,' Harwood added. 'We just want to make sure the students are connected to the planet as much as possible because it does have such an impact.'
Yahoo
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TSTC Welding Technology students eye gold at SkillsUSA state event
Mar. 27—BROWNWOOD — Texas State Technical College students Josh Diaz and Stevie Ramirez will have one goal when they compete as a team at the 2025 SkillsUSA Texas Postsecondary Leadership and Skills Conference April 2-5 in Corpus Christi. "We are going for the gold," Ramirez, a Welding Technology student in Brownwood, said in a news release. "We are excited to be competing against some of the best in the state." Diaz, Josh Folio and Ramirez will compete in Welding Fabrication, which requires a team to use their welding and fabrication skills to build a designed project from the provided material. "There is a lot of studying involved because of the extra measurements," Diaz said of the competition. Ramirez said they have been preparing for the event while working in the college's lab. "We are really pushing each other to be better," Ramirez said. "We are doing the extra things in the lab to make sure we are ready." Diaz admitted they had some "little techniques" to master before the competition. Ramirez said that is how their instructor, Salvador Marquez, is preparing them. "Sal will come in and test us on the project," Ramirez said. "He knows what it takes to be successful at SkillsUSA." In addition to their goal of winning, Ramirez said there is an additional objective for the duo. "We want to see how our work compares to the other competitors, especially those from the other TSTC campuses," he said. SkillsUSA is a professional organization focused on employability, leadership and technical skills that help college students pursue successful careers and be part of a skilled workforce. SkillsUSA has more than 100 specific contests at the state and national events in which students can compete, from 3D Visualization and Animation to Welding Sculpture. Diaz and Ramirez are currently studying for certificates of completion, but both plan to continue their education by adding the Welding Advanced Pipe Specialization certificate at the Brownwood campus. "I am glad that the pipe welding program is coming to our hometown," Ramirez said. To learn more about TSTC, visit
Miami Herald
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Take a trip to fight climate change? Group meets in Miami to tout psychedelic solutions
In South Florida, innovative ideas are being employed every day to deal with climate change threats. Start-up tech companies are 3D-printing sea walls, turning seaweed into fertilizer and even building houses out of recycled plastic. One group that gathered recently in Miami has a more unorthodox idea for coping with what may well be an existential crisis for South Florida in the coming decades. They are pitching the notion that tripping on some magic mushrooms or other hallucinogens might inspire 'consciousness shifts' in the populace to do better for the planet. Major legal hurdles aside — psilocybin, the substance in mushrooms that triggers trips, is a controlled substance and using it or selling it is a crime in Florida and many states — the idea is that if more people transcend into the psychedelic realm it could encourage more awe and appreciation of nature and a deeper personal connection to the world. Psychedelics for Climate Action (PSYCA) hopes that maybe, just maybe, humankind might learn to live in harmony 'like a flock of birds.' 'Psychedelics teach, that we are all one and that we are all family on this planet, and we need to collectively protect our home,' said Marissa Feinberg, PYSCA's founder. Members of the group met for the first time in Miami last week with the goal of demystifying psychedelics that have shown promise in treating several mental issues like depression and addiction. The night consisted of talks followed by meditation and dancing at the Climate Innovation Hub in Little Haiti. Speakers included locals from the Miccosukee Tribe and a Miami-based ketamine therapist as well as visitors who came from as far as Switzerland. Yadira Diaz, who leads the Miami chapter of the group, said while she was living in California working for Pepsi 'selling plastic for a living' she had a life-altering trip on a psychedelic drug called DMT and mushrooms that inspired her to pivot careers. She moved back home to Miami and built a climate start-up, Gradible, where she works with clients like the event venue, Factory Town, to identify ways to cut waste and energy that will ultimately save the business money. 'It can be a really beautiful, powerful awakening,' Diaz said. 'When we feel our best we do our best.' Psychedelic trips can produce intense emotion or 'out-of-body experiences' including hallucinations. It's been described as feeling like time stops. On good trips, users say nature can appear more saturated and vibrant and move in a way that almost looks like its breathing. Just last weekend Diaz said she was in the Florida Keys with some friends kayaking, they took some mushrooms, then went on a hike and snorkeled. During the psychedelic experience, she said they talked about how the Keys could be the first to go from sea level rise and how lucky they were to experience it. 'That's one example where it was just a beautiful experience with a beautiful group of people with the right environment, with the right doses, and we were just all frolicking and having the best time,' Diaz said. Psychedelics are illegal in Florida but some, mostly mushrooms AKA shrooms, are also fairly widely used and all bills introduced to try to decriminalize them have died. Although there was a Florida bill introduced last year currently in committee that could require the Department of Health to conduct a study on alternative mental health treatments like psilocybin and ketamine. The FDA has also approved a form of ketamine, a drug originally approved as an anesthetic for children, as a treatment for depression in adults with treatment-resistant depression. Francesca Cerchione, a holistic therapist now living in Miami, said she has clients who suffer from anxiety over the implications of climate change. Ketamine, that patients order online and put under their tongue, has been particularly helpful with one of her longtime clients from New York who lost her home after Hurricane Sandy. 'Ketamine helps reorganize activity in the brain and process trauma,' Cerchione said. 'It's a way [for patients] to connect with the oneness of the world and do something outside of themselves.' The events PSYCA has hosted so far in New York and the launch event in Miami are 'medicine-free' — although they did offer drinks micro-dosed with Delta-9, a legal cannabis less psychoactive than weed, and functional lion-mane mushroom. 'I consider these events to be like integration, for these people to come together, connect with each other, build community, support each other,' Feinberg said. There are, for those interested, six-day mushroom coaching retreats in legal jurisdictions — the last two being in the Netherlands. The program called Connected Leadership is the first to study psychedelic creativity, and decision-making in business leaders observed by University of Maryland professor, Bennet Zelner. The group says small business founders and even managers of multinational companies have paid around $10,000, not including the flight, to get dosed with psychedelics. Reverend Houston Cypress, who read a poem during the event, said he grew up benefiting from the Miccosukee Tribe's plant-based medicines. Afterward, he told the Miami Herald those very plants were threatened by development or bad policy. He wants to guard the conditions for the plant medicines to grow: 'Let's make sure these plant medicines are available for the future. Let's make sure they're available for the next generation,' he said. A debate that has been brought up in psychedelic science conferences is whether Indigenous plants, like peyote, for example, can be respectfully taken from the ground and Indigenous people to bring to the mainstream. Cypress thinks there's a way it could be done ethically: 'We can use science to produce these medicines in forms that are not so extractive or not so destructive to the ecosystem,' Cypress said. 'We can make these available in ways that are respectful of nature, that are respectful of Indigenous communities, and are not appropriative of Indigenous communities either.' This is certainly not the first group to suggest psychedelics could make the world a better place. In the 1960s, the band talked about the inspiration of psychedelics - mainly LSD —on their music and about how they felt that giving it to all our leaders would put an end to wars. The hallucinogenics also inspired multiple hits, like Come Together. But they later, according to Rolling Stone, stopped extolling its virtues. Veterans have also been at the forefront of fighting for psychedelics for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) treatment. The Department of Veteran Affairs allocated millions of dollars for a psychedelic therapy program to treat PTSD. Some veterans didn't wait for the funding to come through and went to Mexico to receive treatment. But there also are significant questions about its long-term use and potential side-effects. Florida State Senator Jay Collins, a Republican from the Tampa area, sponsored a project at USF Health that funded a clinical trial into the efficacy of psilocybin as a treatment for PTSD in veterans. But, counter to PSYCA's goals, he's also introduced bills that would erase the word climate change from state laws. Next steps for the group in Miami are still being figured out. One idea PSYCA has is to create a climate action guide to help people, once they have tried mushrooms or other psychedelics to actually get involved in sustainable projects in their community. 'The big, hairy, audacious goal would be to actually help to create a consciousness shift, to help catalyze this with this community, and make ourselves obsolete,' Feinburg said. 'We shouldn't need a whole climate action movement. It should be a way of life.' Ashley Miznazi is a climate change reporter for the Miami Herald funded by the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Family Foundation in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners.
