Week 6 & 7: The Big Easy
Our week in New Orleans was the two month mark for the bus tour! At this point, many students are curious about our travels and how the bus ended up so far from New York. A new appreciation for the bus comes with sharing this information with students- along with the most commonly asked question: "where do you guys sleep?"
New Orleans makes for an interesting context to be teaching students about sustainable development given the city's history with it's own recovery post-Katrina. Many of the core ideas of sustainable development can be applied to multiple backdrops outside of the village clusters selected for the project. For New Orleans in particular, improving infrastructure is a major priority. Students discussed the condition of the roads and expressed concern about the durability of the levee system here. I was impressed by the Middle Schoolers at Lycee Francais who managed to think critically about the levee system here, which understandably is part of their everyday life here. (I did not learn what a levee was until I was 16)
Something I was eager to discuss with students was the changing agricultural landscape of New Orleans. In the past few years, urban farms have started to dot the landscape of abandoned lots across the city. This is certainly a reaction to the food desert issues that has concerned the city for years and investing in agriculture has become a big focus here. Similarly, the Millennium Villages Project made agricultural development a major focus in the selected sites. Showing how the effect of growing your own food can resonate far beyond just feeding a community.
