Though I have always loved the concept of service-learning, which goes to great efforts to ensure both service and learning components are seamlessly integrated throughout the course of a project, I had never had the opportunity to be involved with one before. Now is the perfect chance! Though ideas had been bouncing around in my head for months, I knew I had to do something to commit myself in some way, so I contacted Habitat to initiate the partnership.
In my initial musings, I thought this would be a 3-week project but I recently discovered a hiking trip to Monte Cristo, (national park in El Salvador that includes a cloud forest!) the weekend the culminating trip to Ahauachapan would take place. I really wanted to go, so I decided to spend 4-weeks on the project solely based on Monte Cristo. The Sunday before starting this month-long project, I went to school for 6-hours and finally put together a rough outline. After all the planning, I was thankful to realize 4-weeks was actually much better educationally-speaking as well! J
The project contains 4 main components: chemistry content, water testing, committee work and reflection. Within the chemistry content component, the students do a majority of the work at home from notes and practice worksheets posted online with dedicated in-class time for questions, lecture over the most difficult topics, a quiz at the end of each week and a lab or demo to support the material each week as well.
A water testing component required the students to research a particular water test, then in groups, perfect a particular method of testing based on water testing materials we had in the science department so they can perform the test when we go to Ahuachupan. I definitely created this entire project without first actually searching and seeing what water testing materials we had available. Whoops! Thankfully, people found random water testing kits in the back of their closets, attachments to previously under-utilized electronic probes and kids were able to create testers from sundry items laying around the lab. I hope the quality of the water is good, and we don’t find anything suspect!
The third component is committee work: fundraising, service learning and water quality. Fundraising has the task of raising money. It costs $500 to connect one family to running water, the kids wanted to have a goal of $500. I told them they need to think bigger. They said, $1000? I said, “Really?!” I told them we need to think big. They decided on $5,000. They started making a list of the companies I see all over San Salvador. There were a few I didn’t see up there, so I suggested them. They informed me the owner of those don’t have 10th grade kids. “Wait, all of those companies are owned by your parents?!?” I asked. Yep. Wow. We’d better raise more than $500.
The Service Learning committee is in charge of creating activities for the class (or student body) to do to raise awareness of the life of a person who doesn’t have running water. My students have maids and drivers. They have seen poverty their entire lives because they are used to living around poverty and they feel bad about people live in poverty. However, they have rarely experienced it. This is their chance to simulate situations to feel the strain of carrying water and the mental dilemma of realizing this isn’t an activity for many, but a daily reality!
The final committee of Water Quality is in charge of communicating with the community leaders to find out the needs of the community with respect to water quality and education and they are then going to make posters and brochures for people to share about purification sanitation practices.
The final piece of the project is reflection. They are answering a weekly survey providing me feedback about how the logistics of the project are going, and they are responding to a weekly blog to help them connect the different portions of the project to each other. It’s my hope that the blog responses and in-class reflection sessions are helping them process what they are doing, why they are doing it, and how they are doing it. Then, we are attempting to reflect on how to take these skills and apply them in a different context so the serving and learning don’t stop here!
When I started this almost two weeks ago, I was pretty nervous about how it was going to work. I had NO IDEA! I had been emphasizing collaboration between the different committees as well as collaboration between the common committees from all 4 of my different classes. Unprompted, the kids from various committees arranged for all of the students to get passes from me to meet in my room during study hall to subdivide all the tasks within the different classes. They created an email address, facebook page (“Like” it at Gota por Gota [Drop by Drop]) and twitter account (@Gota_por_Gota) for the project and are making a video to show to potential sponsors. It’s super exciting to see what kids will do when you give them ownership and an opportunity to make a difference.
It will be interesting to see how many students elect to go on Saturday, May 19th when we culminate the project by going and starting to dig the trenches for the pipes and provide some educational materials and brief demonstrations. I have decided it will be optional and I’m not going to offer extra credit. These students need to have the chance to feel good about doing something purely for others and receiving nothing for themselves in return. Let’s see if they’ll go help a community because they’ve become invested, and it’s a good thing to do!
