Lauren Huntington

Huntington’s innovative teaching idea, “Silver Springs Science Center,” focuses on providing students the opportunity to learn about living sustainably and growing their own food by implementing an indoor aquaponic growing tower, called a tower garden. Since Wyoming has a short growing season that does not fall during the school year, using gardens as a science learning tool is a limited option. The use of a tower garden can expose students to healthy food options that they may not have had before. The tower garden can also be applied to almost all biology lessons including characteristics and needs of living things, how organisms grow through mitosis, reproduction, photosynthesis and cellular respiration, genetics, evolution, and ecology.  Using a tower garden, Huntington hopes to give students ownership of their learning in science and allow them to make real connections with nature.