Creating a culturally responsive (Ladson-Billings 1995) or culturally sustaining (Paris 2012) learning environment requires teachers making connections to students' experiences outside of school, allowing them to draw on what González, Moll, and Amanti (2006) refer to as students' "funds of knowledge," or the values, interests, and discourse patterns they bring from home, as part of the learning process. This asset-based approach centers understanding and valuing students' contributions in the classroom. In this article, the authors describe a five-lesson engineering unit with fourth-grade students to build a picnic table for a local park. The majority of the students at the school speak Spanish as their first language, 14 percent are African American, and 10 percent are White. While 95 percent of the students are eligible for free and reduced lunch, the school's neighborhood is frequently identified as one of the revitalized and growing communities in the city.