A REMARKABLE BOOK BY KEVIN W. RILEY, ED.D.
Vida Azul
How High School Students
Built an Underwater City,
Launched a Renaissance
in Education,
and Reclaimed the Sea
SECOND EDITION
CHAPTER 11: City Lights
One night, during a debate about how far they were willing to let the project go, a city councilwoman actually told the truth:
“Look, we can’t keep encouraging these kids to build an underwater city. It’s just too dangerous. So is their obsession with saving the planet.”
But then she paused and added: “Not that they don’t have a city in them, or that they wouldn’t dive down to the ocean floor to rescue sea turtles entombed in plastic fishing nets.”
She was right. We would. And we did. We were all entombed in that plastic, too.
–TIME Magazine Interview, May 13, 2075
ABOUT VIDA AZUL
Vida Azul is about some very ambitious high school students who are building an underwater city off the coast of San Diego. They have a long way to go and so much has to change: systems and expectations and human behavior. And the clock is ticking. Our planet is on fire. The oceans are choking on more carbon, plastic and toxic waste than they can possibly absorb and it is surely going to fall to the next few generations to save it all.
Their mission is "to design and build an underwater city." This is their pathway.
THE INTERVIEW
The book introduces Flora Esperanza, a high school senior, who talks about their extraordinary city in the sea. It is called Vida Azul— Blue Life— and on this day in the Year 2075, it officially opens to the world.
Flora describes how kids designed and built this city over decades—rethinking clean energy sources, sustainable food production, desalination, carbon management and the elimination of microplastics from our waterways.
And she describes why:
"We didn't start this project to seize real estate or monetize the ocean," she said."We only wanted to live inside it. Symbiotically. The Earth's last reef."
There may be a thousand reasons to doubt the premise of Vida Azul. But that’s the purpose of this book: to ponder a future in which generations of children acquire the knowledge, skills and values necessary to restore our oceans.
THREE SECTIONS
Section I presents The Mission: "to design and build a safe, inhabitable and sustainable community off the coast of San Diego."
Section II, A Blue Curriculum, promotes ocean literacy. What science, technology, engineering, and math would students need to actually build a city in the sea? What personal values around issues of sustainability and environmental justice? What design skills and creative arts? And which career pathways lead toward the ocean economy?”
Finally, in Section III, Building Vida Azul describes a process that is both feasible and viable. It proposes deliverables, mile markers, and the 5 separate phases during which high school kids could literally build an underwater city.
"The sea is a vast and unpredictable wilderness," says Flora. "But we grew up down there. And more than any other trait, we have learned to channel her remarkable resilience.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kevin Riley has served in the public schools of San Diego County for more than forty years. He has been a football coach, classroom teacher, race relations consultant, principal, and executive director.
He taught at the county’s smallest school on Palomar Mountain and in the second largest school district in California. He has worked in rural and urban schools, schools on the beach, juvenile court schools, and charter schools. He served on the adjunct faculty of University of San Diego. He founded Bayfront Charter High School.
At every stage of his career, Dr. Riley has left behind a legacy of transformational ideas that directly benefit children and the educators that serve them.
Kevin and his wife Annie live with their dogs in San Diego, not far from their grown kids and the grandchildren.
BOOKS BY KEVIN W. RILEY
Vida Azul
(Second Edition)
Fighting for
Ms. Rios
The Lights of
El Milagro
Click for Availability on Amazon
