During Earth Week, Pacific Ridge students, faculty, and staff celebrated the community's commitment to environmental awareness with a number of sustainability challenges and activities. Wednesday's "Blackout Day" and Thursday's "Waste-Free Lunch" encouraged careful consideration of classroom energy usage and lunchtime food waste, while a campus wide energy reduction challenge had Upper and Middle School students battling to be named conservation champions. The week ended with a Community Life presentation by Chuck Samuleson, a Pacific Ridge alumni parent and President of the local non-profit, Kitchens For Good. Samuelson spoke about his organization's mission to break the cycles of food waste, poverty and hunger through innovative programs in workforce training, healthy food production, and social enterprise.

Chuck Samuelson shares the mission of his non-profit organization, Kitchens For Good, during an Earth Week edition of Community Life. 

On Wednesday, April 20th, Pacific Ridge came alive with verse and rhyme as four professional Shakespearian actors roamed the campus in celebration of National Poetry Month and Shakespeare's Birthday. The actors popped into classrooms and offices to deliver monologues, sonnets, and hip-hop style breakdowns of the bard's poems. During lunch, students got into the Shakespearian spirit by participating in flattery and insult slam competitions using Elizabethan era vocabulary. Students delighted in stringing together barbs including, "thou art a peevish, sour-faced boar," then soothing the sting with compliments including "is thou not the most delicate, honey-tongued wafer-cake?"    

8th-grade students in the STEAM-oriented Making Music class are applying their Conceptual Physics knowledge to explore the acoustics of music. They are also receiving a hands-on education in the importance of good design, precise measurements, and an engineer's problem-solving mindset, by building various stringed and percussion instruments. Last week, the group had an opportunity to see how the professionals at Taylor Guitars, the top manufacturer of acoustic guitars in the United States, seamlessly combine art, skill, and technology to produce quality products. During a tour of the Taylor factory in El Cajon, the group witnessed the entire guitar construction process, from wood selection to final assembly.   

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