West Hollow students have lab partners on four continents with whom they collaborate and share data in hopes of better understanding how different cultures approach the challenges facing populations in various parts of the world. Students use Mandarin and Spanish to communicate with one another over FlipGrid and often share in each other’s cross cultural celebrations. Most recently, we harvested a crop of bok choi and other Asian vegetables from our Mars Farm to celebrate Chinese New Year in their Mandarin classes. Data collected from the growth of these hydroponic crops has been shared with schools in Finland that are also experimenting with this form of alternative agriculture.

We are also collaborating with schools in Wales to help implement a school-wide anti-plastics campaign as part of Earth Day. Data collected from a beach cleanup will be shared and compared against those in other parts of Europe and Mexico as well.