Of course, by the end of the day, I was reminded of why I do environmental education. In just a few hours my students had turned a barren hillside full of gullies into a terraced slope, with vegetated borders and a winding, erosion resistant path through the middle. Students of all ability levels shined with pride over what they had accomplished. I had answered the question of why, but not how to avoid the problems in the first place. While trips like this still have stress associated with them, I have mitigated my burden in a couple of ways:
- Ask for permission at the beginning of the year. Rather than collect almost a hundred permission slips every time I want to take my kids across the street or put a video they made on the internet, I send one all encompassing permission form at the beginning of the year.
- Ask for help. The first year I did a planting like the one I mentioned above I was lucky enough to run into a woman who was administering a grant that our school had received. I mentioned the project I was working on and she offered to help. A huge weight was lifted from my shoulders. Last year, I started the project and the year by calling together a group of people I knew might want to be involved to help plan the project from the beginning. Knowing I had a team of invested individuals who were in my corner made the last day a whole lot easier.
Another important point to be made here is not forgetting to advertise the awesome service learning you are doing with your students. In this day and age as teachers we are so stressed out about getting the great projects together we forget to alert the media etc. I think as teachers we need to market ourselves and what we are doing to the public so they can see how hard we are working to create quality programming for their students-so in turn they will support our work in the future. Money for service learning is being cut so much right now even though it is so important. As teachers we need to make sure people know about our work!
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