Week four April 3—sustainable community building

Our new efforts to attract participants to the after school program were very successful this week. We had six students this time and with the numbers we had from our class we were able to work either one-on-one or two of us to a kid. I feel as if we achieved so much more this week than in previous weeks and the kids seemed to be really into the whole project and excited to get started. The activity that we put together for the day was to use recyclable materials such as cereal boxes and plastic bottles to build their ideal town or community. The kids were very good at including ideas like big parks, efficient irrigation tunnels, and also how the streets worked to decrease vehicle transportation. I think the thing that surprised me the most was how vivid the image of this community was in their minds. When you asked them questions about what they were designing or if they wanted your help building something you tended to be more in the way. I sat back and just listened to the boy I worked with as he discussed and created what he saw in his mind taking no other designs or methods into account. Each took so much pride in their vision and each was very unique. I think this process of working with the kids is one of the first steps that one can take into incorporating a place based education into a curriculum. We listened to a lecture by Michael Duffin in which he discussed the benefits of a place based education. He talked about how this new education can change the culture of the classroom and how people look at learning. I think that small activities such as the ones that we planned have this hands on work that changes the way the students think. It might be difficult to plan, but the effects it has on how open the kids are and how much more they engage themselves when they work with the real world instead of hypothetical instances. I think bringing the curriculum closer to home for them rather than learning about the Amazon thousands of miles away allows them to be clearer in the impact they are capable of.

Brittany