Students in my economics class in Custer, South Dakota, routinely take on community projects. Recently we did the research and then filed the forms for a FmHA Loan for low-cost housing for senior citizens in the area. To help area businesses we conducted a survey of student purchasing power and product/services needs and worked with local restaurants and retailers to help them capture those dollars. We have even run a vending operation and invested our profits in the stock market.
We still have a textbook, but we use it less and less. The textbook does not drive the curriculum of this class anymore; studying the community and how it affects students' lives does. Students display a new level of awareness and responsibility that is surprising even to me. I get phone calls from parents who can't believe that their kids are talking about the “multiplier effect” of dollars exchanging hands within the community. But they are. And it all came about through a meeting with the Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory (McREL).
Strengthening the School-Community Connection
In 1987, at the urging of my superintendent, I attended a meeting sponsored by McREL. The lab was trying to find a few pilot schools in western South Dakota that would be interested in playing a larger role in the economic development of their communities. The Rural Schools and Community Development project was based on the belief that rural schools and rural communities are tightly linked and highly interdependent: a strong, vital rural community is dependent on the existence of a high-quality educational program, and a high-quality educational program is dependent on a vital community to provide the necessary resources for the operation of the school.
In many rural communities, the school is the largest economic enterprise. It has the largest budget, often the finest facility, and the largest cadre of well-trained personnel. Tax dollars are invested in the community's most precious resource—its young people—but then schools measure their success by how many of their graduates leave to continue their education or find employment elsewhere. Eventually, if this one-way flow of resources continues long enough, the rural community withers away and dies.
Becoming a Community Asset
But students can make contributions to the community while they are still in school. Moreover, if students come to understand and appreciate the place where they live, their attitudes may change concerning the desirability of remaining or returning to rural communities where they might create their own jobs rather than needing to find employment elsewhere. As Paul Nachtigal, Director of McREL's Rural Institute, said, “Our goal is to help schools in rural communities move from being a drain on community resources to being an asset for ensuring rural viability. By using the community as a focus of study, we can improve the education of our students and contribute to the well-being of the community at the same time.”
Initially, I wanted to get involved in the Rural Schools and Community Development project because I thought it would be fun for my students. I figured we would spend a few days, perhaps even a week, on the topic of economic development and that it would be a good break from our normal “academic” routine. As it turned out, our involvement in the economic development of our community was the most powerful learning experience that my students had ever had in school—and the beginning of a dramatic change in what I taught, how I taught it, and why I taught what I did.
Helping the Chamber of Commerce
The 18 juniors and seniors in my class and I began by having some discussions with the Economic Development Committee of our Chamber of Commerce about the effectiveness of its advertising. The Chamber of Commerce advertises our area of South Dakota as a family vacation stop in several national magazines. Through reader card requests, they knew that thousands of people asked for more information about visiting the Custer area but they didn't know if these people actually came. Together we decided that we could be most helpful in doing some research to help them answer this question.
Following a meeting with the Committee, the students decided that there were four major questions to answer: Did the readers like the information they received? Did the readers visit our area within 12 months? If they did visit, what did they see or where did they stop? Would the readers recommend Custer to family and friends as a place to visit?
The Chamber provided us with the names and addresses of the people who had requested information on Custer within the past year based on the advertisements in the two national magazines. After reviewing the ways we could collect answers to our questions, we decided to mail a survey to a random sample of names.
Conducting a Survey
Students felt the questions could be answered with simple yes/no responses. They designed a stamped, self-addressed return postcard with the survey on the back.
Several students felt that the survey should have a personal touch. They thought we would get a better response if readers knew this was a high school student project, so one member of the class drafted a letter explaining why we were doing this survey. It was important, he explained, for the reader to return it so the class could get an A.
Members of the class signed each letter in ink instead of running the original letter with the signature through the copy machine. We also hand-addressed the 500 envelopes instead of using mailing labels. At the suggestion of a student, we included a new brochure about Custer to entice the readers to visit if they never had. The Chamber covered the expense of stamps, paper, envelopes, and postcards.
When the postcards came back, we tabulated the responses and evaluated the results. The response rate was an unbelievable 60 percent! The students prepared a presentation for the Economic Development Committee explaining each step of the survey and an interpretation of the results. People did visit our area; they liked it and would definitely recommend it to their friends and family. The Chamber knew for the first time that its advertising and response process was working.
A Genuine Learning Experience
Students at other schools in South Dakota have also used the community as a focus of study with similar experiences. In Belle Fouche High School, students in a language arts class began to learn and polish their interviewing and writing skills by collecting the personal remembrances of elderly community members, which they later published and sold as a collection of local oral histories. A chemistry class at another school conducts research on the water quality of local streams and how that quality affects the organisms that live in and around the water. In Lyman High School in Presho, South Dakota, students provide market research services to businesses in the area.
- work with their classmates and community members—or, more broadly, they developed interpersonal skills;
- conduct research, organize, and evaluate data—they handled information;
- plan and schedule their work—they managed their projects, their time, and resources;
- reason, solve problems, and make decisions—they developed and used thinking skills in a real-world situation.
Best of all, students discovered that they didn't have to wait until they grew up and moved away to make a contribution, that they could play an active role in their community's life as students. And some may even decide to stay in the place that they are coming to know, and love.