High Tech High Media Arts Community Garden

Seniors in 12th grade Environmental Science are the caretakers of the High Tech High Media Arts (HTHMA) Community Garden, a 5000 square foot garden and orchard space. Each semester, students embark on projects that both develop and maintain this space as a community resource and local model of sustainability, all the while growing food with purpose. We have developed a pilot CSA and Farmers' Market program, and are working with our school and local community to move toward zero waste. 

Our class mission statement is: “To empower environmental stewardship through sustainable, student-driven, community-centered gardening.”

HTHMA is a public non-profit, directly-funded charter school in San Diego, California, receiving federal funding for Title I, Title II, and Special Education. Over 70% of our student body is non-white and over 50% of students qualify for the Free and Reduced Lunch program. HTHMA draws its students from the entire San Diego area through a blind, zip code based lottery and therefore serves a community that reflects our city's diversity. HTHMA is a project-based school founded on the design principles of Common Intellectual Mission, Adult World Connections, Teacher as Designer, and Personalization.  We are an equity project, seeking to bring together learners from distinctly different socioeconomic statuses, family structures, ethnicities, neighborhoods, etc. to collaborate and expand each others’ views of the world. HTHMA graduates all of its students ready for post-secondary institutions, and currently supports 400 students in grades nine through twelve. Each senior class inherits the garden space as an authentic, capstone senior experience.