Environmental Charter High School

Infobox HighSchool
name = ECHS


established = 2001
type = Four-year secondary school College Prep Curriculum
head = Allison Suffet-Diaz, Phillip Schwenk, Jenni Taylor
city = Lawndale
state = California
country = USA
campus = Small Campus in a quite neighborhood, about a quarter of a block small.
students = 450
free_label = Address
free = 16315 Grevillea Ave. Lawndale, CA 90260
colors = Blue, White
homepage = http://www.echsonline.org/

Environmental Charter High School is a 9th through 12th grade public charter high school in Lawndale, California. It is one of the distungished schools in Lawndale and in the Los Angeles County.

Currently, the school moved campuses, their previous campus was the Lawndale Christian Church. The new campus enabled the school to accept a larger amount of students, previously 380 students attended the school in the 2006-2007 school year, and now in the 2007-2008 school year, 450 students are currently attending.

About the School

In 2001, the school was founded by Alison Suffet-Diaz, who is now the Instructional Leader at the school, because she wanted to create a rigorous school curriculum that enabled teens to not only go into to college, but to learn how to manage resources, give and reach out to the community, to teach teens how to meet high expectations, and to make teens stewards of their communities. People assume ECHS is a private school due to students eager to attend having to submit an application and be approved, but since it is a charter school it is required of them to do so. The school accepts anyone from the Los Angeles Area. Students from Lennox, Inglewood, Compton, Hawthrone, Lawndale, Gardena, Bellflower, Maywood, etc. attend the school. To promote a safer learning environment, students are required to where uniforms.

The teachers in the school are available to tutor students during lunch, afterschool, or if an appointment is made. Parents could go on their child's Powerschool account to check their child's grade and all teachers have e-mails so parents could communicate with their child's teachers regarding their child.

The school takes their students to over night trips once a year for educational purposes. The freshmen go to Catalina, The Sophomores go to Joshua Tree, Juniors go to the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and the Seniors go to San Diego. Each trip is three days and two nights. A $100 dollar donation must be made for the trips annually since the school covers the majority of the cost. The school also offers job shadowing programs for their seniors.

The school is now offering a job shadowing program where students sign up for a specific job occupation and basically become an intern. Job shadowing options range from local programs like the RAP after school program to working in companies like Raytheon.

Green Ambassadors

Green Ambassadors is an organization, which was helped founded by former ECHS biology teacher Sara Laimon, to empower youth to create environmental changes in their community and the world around them. This program is a required class for the sophomore class and students organize events, come up with solutions to problems in their communities, attend festivals, major events like L.A. Fashion Week, conventions, and take trips to places like San Francisco and Costa Rica. In the 2006-2007 school year, selected students who were in the program went to Brazil for two weeks to conduct research.

Also all sophomores, once registered, get two official college credits in the elective category through L.A. Trade Tech. Students participate in Community Action days were the students go out to their community (school community or urban communities) to inform others about global environmental issues and educate communities and the solutions to the issues through group work, research, and much more. People assume that this program focuses on solving just issues, like saving trees, but the program also focuses on global issues like poverty, diseases, violence etc. Because of the organizations hard work on working on their causes, the Sundance Channel filmed an episode about Green Ambassadors early 2007 and has been aired.

Recently, the Green Ambassadors took a trip to Big Bear to participate in a special program. The Green Ambassadors will also be visited by Common Vision some time around February 25th to February 29th 2008, which donated around one hundred or more trees to the small campus. The students will be planting the trees around March 1st 2008 in order to beautify the school and to provide shade and food not only for the school, but for the local community.

During the summer of 2008, several Green Ambassadors took a trip to Costa Rica for a week to learn how Costa Ricans are living sustainably and to teach others what learned from their trips upon their return.

External links

* [http://www.echsonline.org/ Environmental Charter High School]
* [http://www.greenambassadors.org/ Green Ambassadors]