Ross School students live ‘off the grid’ for senior project
This past summer, two students at the Ross School did something unconventional for their senior project and took on a month-long sustainability challenge, living “off the grid.”
In a remarkable project, Karen Sanchez and Sylvia Channing, seniors at the Ross School in East Hampton, founded by Courtney Sale Ross in 1991, fished and grew their own vegetables in order to feed themselves. The two resourceful girls slept and lived in a 16-by-16 foot tent in Channing’s backyard.
The project grew from Channing’s creation of an environmental club at the Ross School.
“I wanted to do something with sustainability for a while,” Channing, 17, was quoted saying in the article. “I would always say to my friends, ‘Let’s live in the woods this summer. We can be totally self-sufficient in this amazing agrarian community we live in.’”
Channing and Sanchez hooked up for the project because Sanchez, whose family has a background in farming, wanted her senior project to center around animals.
The challenge the students purposed was to live off only what they could grow, catch, gather or raise for the entire month of August. The two used bicycles for transportation and milked goats.
Part of the test was figuring out what foods would grow in the natural climate, among other roadblocks the girls encountered along the way.
“What I really learned is that you can read about farming animals or anything like that as much as you want,” Sanchez said in the article. “But once you get down to the hands-on experience like that you realize there is no amount of books that can prepare you.”
Read more about the student’s project here from the East Hampton Press.
About the Ross School
Ross School, founded by Courtney Sale Ross in 1991, is committed to offering the highest quality education to the broadest range of students and developing, as part of the Ross Institute, a model for 21st century education that can be applied to transform education in public school settings world-wide.
The global, integrated curriculum at Ross School combined with on-site learning, peer teaching, mentoring, and technology ensures that students will have the skills and frameworks essential for the 21st century.