How a Helix High Science Teacher and His Students Are Creating a More Sustainable Campus
- Feb 26, 2025
- by Alyson Smith
When Kevin Myron began teaching science at Helix Charter High School, he never expected to change the way students and faculty collaborate to shape a greener future for their campus and community while launching the school’s first-ever Sustainability Action Plan.
Myron oversees the La Mesa school’s sustainability initiatives from the staff’s end as a sustainability coordinator — a role that didn’t exist when he began teaching at Helix. The position was created because of his students.
“I started to teach (Advanced Placement) Environmental Science, and a lot of my students were asking, ‘Why aren’t we seeing the course concepts in action on our campus or in our community?’” Myron said. “That got me thinking: Students are excited and passionate. How can we turn that into action?”
The answer came to Myron while attending the US Green Building Council’s Green School Conference in 2023: “Sustainability has to be an institutional goal,” Myron said.
Any actions that they may take needed to be more than a “class-by-class, person-by-person decision,” he explained; Helix needed to make a campus-wide commitment to sustainability. As a charter school, this commitment began with the school’s governing board.
That spring, Myron, alongside both colleagues and students, developed a resolution to appoint a campus sustainability coordinator, as well as to develop a Sustainability Action Plan, which passed unanimously.
During the 2023-2024 school year, Myron began working with a group of students known as the Student Office of Sustainability to develop Helix’s Sustainability Action Plan.
Myron felt his students’ perspectives were essential to developing a comprehensive plan.
“Students see this campus in a totally different light than I do,” he said. “I wanted to empower students from across different grade levels, different interest clubs, to take part in this work.”
The Student Office of Sustainability spent months conducting research (with guidance from Myron) that would inform the development of Helix’s Sustainability Action Plan. They were divided into groups of two to three students, and each group was tasked with researching a different topic.
For example, senior Kyra Orendain, who is also co-president of Helix’s Environmental Club, researched recycling and waste management. She examined how much waste Helix’s campus produced, then looked for opportunities to reduce that waste.
“I’d walk through the halls of campus and see trash on the floor or waste from cafeteria food,” Orendain said. “A lot of students don’t realize that they actually really do care about the environment until they’re given resources.”
Although students were assigned specific research topics, Myron encouraged collaboration between the different groups.
Senior Daniel Agpuon’s group looked for opportunities to make day-to-day classroom operations more sustainable. Their group’s recommendations included practices such as encouraging teachers to turn off their projectors when not in use and creating proper signage for recycling and landfill bins in the classroom — the latter of which was a joint effort between their green classroom, waste management and social media teams.
Students also regularly peer reviewed one another’s ideas.
“The peer review process was really exciting for me because I got to speak about my ideas with like-minded people. We would bounce ideas back and forth,” said Agpuon, who wants to pursue a career in environmental research.
“It was very much a collaborative process, and it was important to come in with an open mind.”
The hard work of both students and staff culminated in a Sustainability Action Plan that includes initiatives to reduce waste and carbon emissions, as well as develop curriculum that will equip students not just to pursue green jobs, but to apply environmental literacy in any field.
Helix recently received a $200,000 state grant to support the development of a four-year multidisciplinary pathway to support environmental literacy. In addition to the AP Environmental Science course currently offered at the school, students will have opportunities to learn about sustainability through their biology and chemistry classes, environmental policy through their government classes, and environmental literature through a new course that’s currently being developed.
Although the “Sustainability Pathway,” as the courses are collectively referred to, will not launch until the 2025-2026 school year, other parts of the Sustainability Action Plan are already being implemented on campus, allowing the Student Office of Sustainability to see their ideas come to fruition.
“It’s really exciting because I can proudly say I was a part of that,” Agpuon said. “I can have that in college applications, and it’s like a badge of honor to be able to tell my family that I was a part of this really big, really impactful initiative on my campus.”
The initial phase of the Sustainability Action Plan includes what Myron referred to as “first priority areas.” This includes the curriculum development for the aforementioned Sustainability Pathway, waste reduction and electric generation.
Earlier this year, Helix partnered with San Diego Community Power to become a Power100 Champion and power their campus with 100% renewable energy to further support their electric generation goals.
“We became a Power100 Champion because Helix Charter High School cares about the work that we do with our students,” Myron said. “We knew we couldn’t keep it in the classroom. We had to take that next step.”
Since becoming a Power100 Champion, Helix has also taken advantage of Community Power’s Commercial Application Assistance, a joint effort between Community Power and environmental consulting firm TRC that connects commercial customers like Helix to programs that support energy efficiency, solar and battery storage and more.
Through Commercial Application Assistance, Helix is conducting an energy audit to study their energy usage patterns and identify areas of improvement and maximize energy efficiency.
Partnering with Community Power — and the entire Sustainability Action Plan — was a “team effort” that began with student ideation, Myron said. Staff then came together to “figure out how to make it happen.”
As Myron oversees the implementation of the Sustainability Action Plan, he will continue to provide students with opportunities to offer their input on decisions impacting their campus.
“There’s so much opportunity with this role to keep students at the forefront of this work,” he said. “That’s what school sustainability should be about: empowering students to put what they’ve learned into action.”