Please excuse this break in China posts to hear from our 5th and 6th grade students in Social Studies. Our classroom is busting at the seams with exciting news! Honestly, there’s so much amazing work that I can’t keep up with posting.

We just finished a spectacular quarter with Homebase Barton and Homebase Salk, and today two new classes started our quarter four unit: the Global Action Project. Our theme for the year is learning about how change happens, and our students are participating in real life change efforts!

In the upcoming weeks, I’ll be sharing some of the work from last quarter. Students have experimented with all sorts of interesting initiatives, from making posters clean drinking water to making a claymation video about cooking on a stove with safe ventilation.  I was blown away by the work these students did when they were given room to pursue their passions and do real work with real benefits. Stay tuned to see more about their action.

If you aren’t able to be in class with us, you might be interested to hear how we started this unit. That’s what we did today with Homebase Gandhi and Homebase Edelman! On our first day, we posed a question to get students thinking about change. We asked, “If you had $100,000 to use to help people, how would you spend it?” Students wrote on this topic first before they shared their ideas out loud. Here is a taste of some of their initial ideas:

On the last day of the quarter, we will pass back to students what they wrote today, and we’ll see if their perspectives have shifted. At the end of June, will they still have the same priorities and strategies? It’s going to be an exciting quarter ahead. I’m experimenting with a new way to share homework, objectives, and agenda for class time by posting it online. If you want to follow along with what we are doing in class, you can view our daily agendas on Google Docs here. OR if you just want to see the highlights, visit this blog again soon.

Note: Want to make a difference today? There are so many great organizations, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention some friends who have helped us out. Special thanks to Valentina who came into our class to talk about Amani Children’s Home in Tanzania and Courtney who skyped in to tell us about Rising Minds and their work in Guatemala. Or perhaps you have magazines that you could send to students in Liberia? For more information, read this request from my friend Kendra who is working with the Peace Corps.