December 1996 — Features
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A Telecommunications-Infused Community Action Project
By having students work in collaborative teams, facing the high-pressure task of completing a large project for professionals in the real world, the classroom itself became a testing ground for managing group dynamics and interpersonal skills. For example, students often found it difficult to meet deadlines. Because they juggled three main duties (technology task, writing Web page content and analyzing literature), they sometimes neglected one assignment to meet the deadline for another. Peers had to occasionally pressure each other to share the work load more evenly. Sometimes the teacher had to intervene for "group therapy."
Many teachable moments arose naturally in the mix of completing the project, contributing organic lessons, setting up appointments, making clear agendas for meetings, learning to ask for help, showing appreciation for other people's time and work, saying thank you, and seeing peers and adults as valuable resources. These are small, but important points that can't help but improve a student's interactions with others, and are ech'ed by the SCANS Report and School-to-Career strategies.[1]
Students Caring About Themselves
Helping students to see, appreciate and feel their own value and worth as individuals is the central goal of Nonprofit Prophets. Students saw this first in that they had created a quality product valued by professionals in the real world. In one respect the World Wide Web acts as the ultimate refrigerator door where proud adults can post student work.
As one student said: "one of the works that I created was actually put up in the Internet so everybody can see it. This made me do it and do my best." One of the most rewarding aspects for project teachers was repeatedly seeing how students became possessive of the class product, to the extent that at the end of the year, each class was convinced that theirs was the best Web site.
Besides celebrating final products, working with concerned mentors also contributed to students' positive self-image. For example, Christina Tarango of La Raza Bookstore/Galer'a Posada not only gave detailed, constructive criticism to help students produce a better Web site, but through her sustained interest in the class and in the students, she became an effective role model and teacher. Students observed that expert knowledge was a gift enthusiastically shared by each adult they encountered.
This modeling transferred to students too, as they took on the role of teachers themselves. As one student put it: "In our class everyone learned something different, HTML, faxing, copies, and so on, so everyone teaches each other." Establishing small expert groups as peer trainers was not only a good way to extend teacher time, but also trained many students quickly and enhanced the student experts' self-esteem.
