A tree may have grown in Brooklyn, but an entire environmental center is sprouting up in the Bronx.

The Energy Environment Research Center, or E2RC, is the brainchild of high school science teacher Nathaniel Wight and his students at the Bronx Design and Construction Academy. It’s an interesting school to host an environmental center.

Opened three years ago, the academy’s focus is on the construction trades. Moreover, it’s situated in the poorest congressional district in the country, where issues related to crushing poverty usually take precedence over environmental concerns.

But that hasn’t stopped Wight and his intrepid students, who are bringing together their passion for sustainability and the environment with their hands-on skills in carpentry, electrical work and architecture to make their center a reality. The center will allow the students to build their knowledge of hydroponics, solar and wind energy and “systems thinking” — all in the service of a more sustainable future.

“It takes the nonconformed mind of a youth to think outside the box,” Wight told me. “The students were a big part of putting these ideas together.”

Here’s the kicker: The students, who this winter won a prestigious international award and a $100,000 grant to fund their proposal, will build the center themselves.

Bronx Design and Construction Academy students are now busy preparing for the fall, when they’ll break ground for the project. They’re spending the intervening months sharpening their skills as young carpenters, architects and electricians and studying in Wight’s ecology class and on the green roof that they built. It’s an ambitious plan, and I couldn’t be more proud of them.

The Energy Environment Research Center is just one example of the great work that career and technical education educators and their students do in their schools every day — work that we celebrated at our annual 2014 Awards Recognition Ceremony on Feb. 6, which brought together more than 400 CTE educators, their friends and families.

Our responsibilities as CTE educators extend far beyond the classroom. We are also invaluable advocates for our students, schools and programs. That’s why CTE educators have been busy engaging in the policy debates that surround CTE at this “defining moment” for our field, as UFT President Michael Mulgrew described it at our CTE summit at UFT headquarters on Feb. 3.

In summit workshops on work-based learning clinics, industry partnerships and other topics, CTE educators offered insightful comments and raised important questions derived from their wealth of firsthand classroom experience.

CTE educators also hit the road for CTE in February, joining me and educators and industry partners from across the country in Washington, D.C., for the Association for Career and Technical Education’s national policy seminar and to lobby lawmakers to reauthorize the Perkins Act, which provides federal money for CTE.

New York City opened seven new CTE programs this year alone and will be opening many more in the years ahead. Current funding is not adequate to support this growth. We must make sure Perkins is reauthorized so that our programs and students have the support they need.

CTE has moved to the top of the agenda in discussions about the future of our country’s education system. Because of the work of our CTE educators in the classroom and in the nation’s capital, New York City is leading the way with high-quality programs that engage our students and prepare them for life after school.

Whether they go on to college or immediately embark on careers, they will always remember their teachers and the lessons they taught them.