Forcing Students to Do Good

For any of you familiar with my school or at all familiar with the stories I tell, you know that the school I teach at is a very expensive private school here in Taiwan. It is the second most expensive school in the country and we generally teach students whose fathers own the factories that made the shoes you are wearing right now. Needless to say, our students generally lead very privileged lives.

So once a year, we like to force them to give back to the community just to prove a point I guess. We call it Common Good Day and it turns into a pseudo house competition. The basic idea is that each house (we have 8 "houses" in our school, just like Harry Potter) choses a charity or act of community service to do on the specific Saturday we set for this forced philanthropic work. Last year my house, Archimedes House, picked up garbage on the side of a mountain. I cannot even begin to explain to you how hot and totally pointless that was.

This year we decided we wanted to actually do something cool for Common Good Day. As a house we decided to put on a Coin Wars competition in the week leading up to the big Saturday. We set the rules a little differently than what I've done in the States but the same basic concept. Each house competes for the most points and you get points by collecting coins in your house jar and you can give negative points to other houses by adding paper money to theirs. Then to raise even more money, we decided to have a scooter and car wash for the teachers and other faculty at the school (see adorable pictures below).

To our complete amazement, both ideas were huge successes. In total, we raised almost $1400 in U.S. currency. We were so proud of our kids because they had everything to do with it: they were excited about it (completely different than last year), they took ownership in the activities (again, so polar opposite of last year) and had good attitudes on the actual day. I had no idea that they could wash a car so well! It was really great to see them work hard for something that was not directly benefiting them.

I think the best part about the day however, was deciding what to do with the money at the end. We went though a website called kiva.org that gives out micro-loans to people around the world that wouldn't otherwise qualify for them to help improve their lives. The cool thing about the website is that you can scroll through the people and chose who you want to donate to. All of our students in Archimedes House intently clicked through countless profiles for the better part of an hour decided exactly who they wanted to help. When they made their decisions they had reasons as to why they wanted to help the particular people that they chose and were really into it. It made me really proud of them- it's how community service is how to feel.