Regardless of the pandemic, two Kaua‘i High School seniors have finished their capstone projects and now have a product to bring to the Kaua‘i’s food industry: locally-grown microgreens.
Every year, students in the Career and Technical Education program have the choice of taking a capstone course.
Gregory Anderson, CTE teacher at KHS, said the course provides students with the opportunity to select a topic of interest in their selected pathway and explore it in great detail while applying the lessons learned throughout their high-school careers.
Students Katherine O’ Neill and Mason Martinez chose to emphasize the school’s farm-to-table movement and provide microgreens for their culinary class to use.
“Katherine is working through a business pathway capstone and Mason is specializing in a natural-resources pathway. In many ways, this collaboration has benefited both students, as they learned from one another from different perspectives,” Anderson said.
Initially, the plan was for O’Neill to manage the
business side of the project and for Martinez to grow the microgreens, but the COVID-19 pandemic changed things. Both students have learned how to be flexible and resilient through the process.
“With students not at school, I’ve been able to do both the planning and planting side,” O’Neill said.“With students not at school to cook (though), we are now brainstorming other ways to utilize our product.”
O’Neill and Martinez are looking to the community to find partners in their project, hoping to sell their microgreens and use the money to further the project.
“We can see having these growing systems in local restaurants, grocery stores and farmers’ markets,” Anderson said. “We encourage interested parties to reach out to us for more information.”
O’Neill said the project taught her “the full circle of bringing a business model to life.”
“I was able to be involved in each step of the process and troubleshoot along the way,” O’Neill said.
Martinez said he set out at the beginning of the project to find something that would be good for the community.
“What I would like for students to learn from my experience is to try and grow microgreens and to not be afraid of trying something new,” Martinez said.
Anderson said he is pleased by both students’ growth and project progress.
“Katherine and Mason have done an excellent job managing this project,” Anderson said. “Neither student had any prior experience growing microgreens before this project. They had to do a lot of research and learned through trial and error with some of the plantings. It is so rewarding to watch students develop and apply their skill sets as they work through a challenging project.”
The students’ microgreens project was funded by a $2,700 grant from the Public Schools of Hawai‘i Foundation.
For more information or to get involved in the project, email gregory.anderson@k12.hi.us.
