Ruby Sheets Explores Different Countries and Cultures
During the last vacation, Ms. Ruby Sheets, one of our 3rd grade teachers, was in Ecuador for a month. She spent most of her time in the Andean town of Patate, 3 hours away from Quito, Ecuador’s capital. She visited other sites, including San Cristóbal island in the Galápagos. But unlike most tourists, she was leading a group of 13 high school students from the USA, China, and France who volunteered to build a community center, harvest oranges, make jam, teach at a pre-school, and lead activities for the elderly and people with special needs.
For more than 10 years, Ms. Sheets has been travelling with Visions Service Adventures, an organization based in the United States that does community service construction projects with under resourced communities in several countries around the world. She has been to the Dominican Republic five times to help build schools and lead summer camps. This time, her destination was Ecuador and the mission was to make bathrooms for a community center and preschool located in the Andes. Each afternoon, after a morning of work, she led cultural excursions in the surrounding area. The students received an 80-hour community service completion certificate. “I do it because when I travel, I like getting to know the people from the communities I work with. Living and working together is the best way,” explains the teacher.
Ms. Sheets states that trips like these open young people's minds to new world perspectives and helps them become more responsible and mature. “On weekends, we explore different places with local community members. Through this project, we worked so closely with the local community that everyone in town knew who we were and greeted us on the street.”
Upon returning from her trip, she got some great news: she had been chosen as the August Certified BrainPOP Educator by the educational website Brainpop. Well done! Read Ruby’s interview at: https://educators.brainpop.com/2017/08/02/getting-know-cbe-ruby-sheets/.
