Student-Led Green Building Projects

For the 10th year in a row (with the exception of the COVID era) we have completed our student projects!  Using the community itself as a classroom, Hero School engages students in applying STEM to solve real challenges. This year, in Social Studies class, teachers and students visited homes and conducted surveys to identify households with the greatest need and to determine how best to improve living conditions for these community members. In Math class, they designed the relevant project. In Art class, they modeled it. In Budget class, they estimated materials costs and establish an implementation plan. In Language and Communication class, they documented the project. The raw materials come from students themselves, who contribute eco-bricks, glass bottles, and aluminum cans. This infrastructure includes ventilated stoves to reduce respiratory illness and firewood consumption, water tanks to collect and store rainwater for access to clean water, composting latrines to improve household sanitation, retaining walls to prevent landslides and erosion, and earthquake-resistant classrooms and homes. This year, for the first time, AI became part of the construction process itself. Of the 137 students involved in projects this year, teachers report that 90% used AI tools during construction, generating cost estimates and materials lists, breaking down building plans into smaller actionable steps, writing and formatting project documentation, and using AI-powered translation to communicate next steps to non-Spanish-speaking volunteers. Students document each building process and open-source the steps in our online project library at lwhomegreen.org. In this way, students become educators by creating content that is available worldwide to guide the replication of projects. 

Links:

• https://lwhome.org/