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Worm Farm Shines on Earth Day

YES Charter Academy Worm Bin Project

At the YES Earth Day Festival the 6th grade class, led by their teacher, Justin Drumm, hosted a ribbon cutting ceremony inaugurating their environmental project, a worm farm. The worm farm typifies the numerous project-based learning activities that students at YES experience.

Participating student, Adriana Ajuria, said, “My Favorite part about the worm farm is helping kids sort the food left on their lunch trays for the worms and looking inside the worm bin.” Student Joshua Riedgerger said, “This worm farm is important to the environment because it keeps food waste from turning into methane gas that causes global warming.” All this student work results in worm castings that the YES farmer, Nick Brown, uses to enrich the soil of the school farm.

YES Charter Academy Worm Bin Project
YES Charter Academy transforms the K12 school experience with project-based learning that is focused on environmental topics, creative tools, accelerated writing, and community collaborations.

Mike Condon, the worm farm expert consulting on the project said this about the students, “The cafeteria to compost worm farm project was designed and implemented by the 6th grade class. They came up with plans, signs and teams of two to run the program at lunch.

Watching them take on their role and execute it was nothing short of amazing. They have shown pride, dedication and the willingness to learn. They all got to learn to lead and to teach, as they worked together to train one another in the compost champion position in the lunchroom. These are our future leaders showing what they are capable of. Way to go 6th grade!!”

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Special Professional Guest Artist: Mr. Frank Nissen

Monday, February 23 – An afternoon of collaboration with the 4th/5th grades and YES High School Media Arts students.

“Mr. Frank” enjoyed a long career with Disney Feature Animation and DisneyToon Studios in LA as a storyboard artist and as a story developer on films Mulan 1998, Tarzan 1999, Dinosaur 2000, Treasure Planet 2002, Pooh’s Heffalump Movie 2005 and Tinker Bell 2010. After leaving LA, Mr. Frank moved back to Auburn CA, where he grew up along the American River.

While living in Auburn, Mr. Frank authored and published the first 2 volumes of Fortune’s Call: A Gold Rush Odyssey

While he is visiting the class, students may ask him about his work on George Lucas’s TV series Droids, which Mr. Frank worked on. This TV series helped shape Star Wars.
4th and 5th grade students with photo permissions on file with YES will be filmed describing and explaining their project-based learning theme of salmon runs in our local watershed. Mr. Frank will illustrate their explanations on large post-its on the board. These illustrations by Mr. Frank will be kept in the 4th Grade classroom
for future reference.

Click here to download the PDF Press Release

YES Charter Academy High School Media Arts
YES Charter Academy transforms the K12 school experience with project-based learning that is focused on environmental topics, creative tools, accelerated writing, and community collaborations.

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