Creating change at Truesdell EC, part IV: Let the competition begin!

During the DC SCORES spring season, each of our 44 teams go through a four-step service-learning process that involves A) Identifying problems that need addressing in their community; B) Researching one issue; C) Implementing a project to make a difference in the community; and D) Reflecting on the impact they made.

This spring, DC SCORES intern Kristen Miano is following the Truesdell Education Campus (elementary school) Trojans as they go through the service-learning process. Read below and watch each week’s video to learn how DC SCORES empowers youth to create change around them. You can also view photos from Truesdell HERE and follow Kristen's Tweets HERE.

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Written by Kristen Miano
Digital Media Intern

The Truesdell Trojans are getting down to business with their service-learning project to pick up the trash around their school. They’ve decided to involve their entire school by turning the project into a competition — whichever hallway of students picks up the most trash and keeps their area the cleanest will win a prize.

But there’s a lot more planning to do before the competition can get off the ground. To make the remaining tasks more manageable, the team has created committees to tackle the project head-on.

“We have the committees to complete tasks, like if we need to have speakers go to classes for our project,” said Godwell T., age 8. “I want to be on the advertising or contest committee.”

Cristella B., age 8, also would like to work on either the advertising or contest committee because she is most interested in making posters or helping to craft the rules for the competition.

“We have committees for persuasion, speaking, advertising and (the) contest,” Cristella said. “I want to see how much trash everyone picks up and pick out the prizes.”

The Trojans also learned the value of slogans for campaigns like theirs. After completing a challenge to match familiar slogans to the company of origin, the kids were asked to come up with their own slogan for their project.

“We figure students know what advertisements are based on what they’ve seen,” Emily Adams, one of the Truesdell writing coaches, said. “We want them to create their own slogan to put on posters and talk to other students about, sort of a catchphrase other students can latch onto to help make the project a success.”

The Trojans are on their way to a great project. The team is excited to get to work on creating a cleaner and brighter school for not only themselves, but all the students at Truesdell.