Planning and Completing a Good Drive for a Local K-9 Rescue Group

Summary of Project

Students will utilize KSDE Standards for Social Emotional Character Development to work together as a group to plan and complete a successful food drive for a local community rescue organization. 

Key Takeaways or Advice

I feel that the struggles that we’ve faced as a group are a small class size, absences, refusal, community partner availability, and snow days. I work as a special education teacher in the most restrictive environment in our district. My students struggle with work completion and staying on task. I had hoped because this was an out-of-the-box experience and project that they’d be more excited and inclined to work on it. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. There were many times they refused to work on the project. There were many days I had multiple students/team members absent. After the first semester, our community connection was no longer available, at no fault of her own. She had a family emergency come up. I felt that we just kept hitting roadblock after roadblock. I definitely can reflect on how things went and know I’ll do things differently next year. 

One thing I would do differently is to chunk the project up into even smaller tasks and work time. This year I used only one class period to work on things, which left the rest of the week unavailable because we had to focus on subject matter for that class. I think doing something every day even if for only 5-10 mins would make a world of difference. 

I also feel instead of trying to always work as a group, having students do their individual tasks and then meeting together weekly or more often would make a lot more sense and we would have gotten so much more completed. 

As a second-year teacher, I feel I’m still learning so much not only about CCPs but also about teaching and instruction period. I know moving into next year, I will do things very differently.