Can our students change the world? Some already have.

This incredible video was created by Josh Pennock and Molly Madden, who created it to help promote the Dollars for Scholars project.  (The music was changed from the original version to avoid copyright infringement.) What better way to use our technology?

This year, our freshmen raised over $3,000 to provide a high school education for students in Liberia -- enough for 23 semester-long scholarships at the Bishop Juwle High School. So, now 6 students will have a full high school education, who would have otherwise been denied it.

It all started last year, when Angie Mason had her English 9 students correspond (via real, paper letters) with students at Bishop Juwle; they continued their engagement by raising money to support the school.  Last year, her students contributed enough funds to build a library.  But that was just the beginning.

This year, the project has expanded, and its reach has become more ambitious: all the teachers of freshman English jumped in with both feet: students in Angie's, Melissa Lewis's, and Melinda Lewis's English 9 classes, and Larissa Filler and Justin McPeak's Humanities 9 classes all participated.

Bishop Juwle High School

(image from the school's website)

Along the way, our students did rigorous, academic work.  They read A Long Way Gone, the memoir of former boy soldier Ishmael Beah, and undertook historical research to understand the consequences of Sierra Leone and Liberia's wars.  They crafted messages, designed posters, shot and edited video, critiqued each other's visual and verbal communication techniques, presented this project to full classes of their peers. They reached out beyond the campus, writing letters to family and friends to raise awareness and money.

"The students surprised themselves," according to Angie. "A good number didn't believe we would meet our goal of raising $1,000, and were blown away when we raised triple that amount." And this translated to academic work, too. She notes that "the engagement level and quality of student work, especially of those middle/lower performing students noticeably increased."  And this is evident in the level of creativity of expression in the commercials that students made to get the word out -- like the video above.

This is a phenomenal example of the quality and the nature of work our students can do when given a challenging task, and a truly meaningful goal.

What are the lessons for us on the outside? Well, here's one: if you want students to do serious work, give them a serious problem.

These students were working to change the minds of the people they knew, to galvanize a community to act and to give.  In service of that larger goal, they did all the sorts of things we value academically:  thinking critically, communicating to a variety of audiences, and solving all sorts of technical and logistical problems in order to get good work done.

This makes me wonder about what we do with all the power we call forth from our students every year.  How much intellectual and physical energy do our students expend every year on the tasks we give them?  How many hours of human labor and intellectual capital are spent on assignments?

As teachers, we direct a massive outpouring of effort, attention, care, and labor.  What if we directed a fraction of this toward real problems -- the "wicked" problems that confront us today?

So, here's praise for Angie, and Melissa, and Melinda, and and Justin, and Larissa -- and for all of their students, and the work they've done.

But all of our praise pales in comparison to what they've really achieved: there are 6 more students in this world who get to go to school.

(Want to read more about the project?  Here's the Falcon Voice article written about the project at the launch of its fund-raising efforts this year. Here's a short write-up of last year's project, posted by RESPECT, the Refugee Education Sponsorship Program: Enhancing Communities Together.)