Burke remains committed to not only rebuilding New Orleans, but making sure that the story of Katrina is told in its full complexity, from the botched response to the tales of hopes, survival and resilience. We have traveled to New Orleans for five years now, and in two weeks, 19 students and six faculty will once again travel to help and learn about one of our nation’s greatest cities. We will be working with an amazing organization called ReliefSpark, Inc.
Over the past 5 years, over 80 Burke students and 12 faculty members/parents have traveled to New Orleans and we have provided over 3,000 hours of service to the region.
Since 2007, Burke has also offered a 13 week Senior Values class on Hurricane Katrina, where students have been able to understand how and why Katrina happened through exploring race, class, history, the environment and culture. Part of our work during this trip is to create a documentary to help other schools continue teaching about New Orleans. The worse tragedy of all is forgetting Katrina ever happened.
The faculty leading the trip are Amanda, Cory, Anike, Evan and Iman (Burke’09), and they’ve all developed a curriculum using New Orleans as text. We’ve got classes on Katrina theater, Vodoun (Voodoo), Filmmaking, Hip-Hop in New Orleans and Reflective Writing.
We held our trip orientation last week, and the students are very excited! We have a full agenda which includes serving at ARNO (Animal Rescue New Orleans), McDonough 42-a school in the Treme neighborhood where we will be working on a rooftop garden and a local homeless shelter. We also have a wetland tour planned, a tour of the Lower 9th Ward and of course, some jazz and delicious food.
Enjoy the pictures of last year’s trip and 2010 Orientation and stay tuned as we live blog our trip over break!
[UPDATE: Don't forget to scroll down to see the other posts from Burke Community Service Week 2010.]
