Design/Build Class
Students started the year off in Design/Build learning about basic design principles, then got their hands on the first project of the year- assembling the eight new raised beds for the kitchen garden. Then, they learned about building with rammed earth in preparation for the chicken coop construction, and practiced building small rammed earth test […]
Urban Horticulture Class Fall 2017
Thanks to the hard work of last year’s class, students in Urban Horticulture have been working on several fronts so far this semester. First, there’s work in the classroom trying to create a proposal for a backhoe. Secondly, there’s the maintenance and harvesting of last year’s kitchen garden beds. And thirdly, this year the school […]
Lead Guitar Class 2017-18
Students in the Lead Guitar class have been quite busy this year! In addition to lots of practice in the classroom, they played several pieces with a three-part harmony in Council, then hosted Brasil Guitar Duo and Lead Guitar founder Brad Richter for an incredible all-school performance, then took to the stage at the Children’s […]
Fall 2017
Sky Islands kicked off its tenth year this August! Students new and old alike participated in a week-long orientation where they learned about the school’s culture and community, toured the site and learned about the various projects we’ve done over the years, and became acquainted with each other through a series of icebreaker games. This […]
Physics Class Cistern Installation
Students in the Applied Physics class put their year’s worth of study to the test when they installed our first water harvesting cistern with the help of our new Architecture and Design/ Build class teacher Ray Clamons. Using what they had learned in the classroom, the students first installed a series of gutters along the […]
Desert Tortoise Habitat Project
Last year, students in the Projects, Research, and Design class wrote a grant to the AZ Game and Fish Dept. Heritage Fund to build a desert tortoise habitat in the school’s courtyard. They received the grant, but did not have enough time to actually begin construction. That was the job of this year’s Ecobiology students. […]
Sky Islands Recognized at Sears Park Dedication Ceremony
Sky Islands High School has officially adopted nearby Sears Park since 2013, and in that time the school has helped install a disc golf course, kept the park clean and free of graffiti, and helped to encourage the neighborhood to reclaim the park for the community. This spring, Sky Islands was formally and officially recognized […]
Arid Lands Management Trip to Hoover Dam
This spring, students in the Arid Lands Management class studied all aspects of the use of dams in the southwest. This included their construction, the different types, their important impact on our economy, agriculture, and lifestyle, and their environmental impacts. After exhaustive research and an opportunity to build model dams of their own and test them […]
Student Photo Exhibition at Murphy-Wilmot Library
The photo exhibition “Compost-to-Compost” is now on display at the Murphy-Wilmot Library through the end of April. The exhibition, a collaboration between the 11th grade Language Arts class and the Photography class, is a photo essay about the Garden-to-Kitchen program at Sky Islands. It includes photos from the Urban Horticulture classes as well as the […]