For this journal discussion I’d like you to think about what you are learning from our Action Project. We’ve spent the last week working hard on researching the New Zealand Mud Snail issue, contacting expert members of the community, locating and ordering products for our educational campaign, and collaborating with one another in order to complete the many tasks necessary to make this project fly.
We’re still in the midst of this project and a lot of work remains unfinished, nonetheless, I’d like you to take a few minutes and think, just think, about what it takes to be active in the community. What have you learned about putting together a campaign to raise awareness for an issue? What is important and what is not? What is difficult and what is easy? What can we do to keep up all the great momentum that we’ve generated from this week of hard work? Your response should reflect that you have thought about these questions and should be, as always, edited for grammar, spelling and punctuation. Thanks.
Zak Maytum
In the last couple of weeks I have learned quite a few things about being active in the community. First, I learned that it involves a lot of tedius phone calling and paperwork. Secondly, more importantly, that it is easier than it looks. I’ve really been impressed by what a few students have acomplished in just a couple of weeks. The only concern I have is keeping the momentum. I think that most/all of us will be much less intersted working on the project on our own time.
stephen
I think that what we are doing is important. There are alot of important steps in our action project. We had to figure out how to show what we are doing to the community. We are making signs, shirts and stickers. We have to do alot of research. We had a man come in and talk to our class about the issue. I think we can keep this momentum up if everyone works and gets along together.
charlie
This is definitely a cool project, but it is not really what I expected. I thought we would be doing more field work (getting out of the classroom and doing stuff) than research and calling people. I also learned it is much harder to contact the right division of Boulder County than I thought. When I first called, I was bounced around probably 12 people before I found the correct person, and then that person was gone. There are more roadblocks to doing something like this than I thought. In fact, I think a good thing for a student to do would be talk to Boulder County and make this sort of thing easier. That would be very hard, but if anybody could do something positive (more) easily, I personally think that would help our community tremendously
chris
I feel that we’ve learned a lot on how the mudsnail got here and it’s a problem. But we have not learned how to get rid of it. That’s what we need to focus on now.
carlton halaby
Well I have learned a few things in the past couple of weeks. First, I’ve learned that it’s actually pretty hard just to find, print, and pay for simple little things like stickers and shirts. I’ev also learned thats its very possible for a highschool class of 7-8 kids to make a diffrence as long as they worked hard and found the right allies. I was very surprised to hear about how many other organizations (people) were out there trying to combat the spreading of the mudsnail and I was impressed at how hard many students worked. Finally, I’m not quite sure how we can keep our momentum …… I’d have to say that the only way is to keep our gun-ho mentality about it.
robert the great
I have found that with a little motivation, New Vista students can excel dramatically. I am almost dumbfounded that a collection of 16-18 year olds can create T-shirts, stickers, and pamphlets on a subject that matters to them and their community. Even though organization isn’t second nature to us, I believe that we stayed true to what we believed. These guys rock!