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12 0 2 , 2 1 December
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36 Volume 50 Number News from the Heart of Idaho: Camas, Lincoln, and Gooding County
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Fairfield Native Learning Named Professor to Care In days gone by, chilof the Year dren use to take on adult reTACOMA, Wash. – With chickens pecking around his feet and 25 rapt students before him in an ancient Chinese courtyard in Fujian province, Professor Karl Fields told the story of Mao Zedong’s historic “Long March” in 1933. It was a desperate retreat by a rag-tag band of Chinese Communists, Fields said—one which began from the very village where they now stood. The students who listened to this lecture amid the dust of an ancestral hall knew then, or later in life came to realize, that they were in the hands of an exceptional teacher. For Fields, too, the study abroad trip was an important turning point in his lessons. “For all that we can do for students in the classroom, I am convinced there is really no substitute for being there,” Fields says. “It secures the knowledge and heightens the knowledge with an experience that sears it into your soul.” It came as no surprise to anyone who knows Karl Fields, professor of politics and government at University of Puget Sound, that he was been chosen for the 2012 Washington State Professor of the Year Award. The recognition, from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, is the country’s most prestigious honor for undergraduate teaching in higher education. This is the seventh such honor continued on page 8.....
sponsibilities at the age of 12 or 13, and sometimes even younger. Often, this was not a choice for the child or the family, if they wanted to have food on the table or clothes on their backs. In today’s world, the opposite is generally true. Children don’t learn to take on responsibilities until they graduate from high school or college, and often not even then. While we certainly do not want our children exploited in the work place, there is a huge need for them to learn how to be adults. Last week, 5th grade students at Camas County Schools spent part of their afternoon learning how to care for their community. It was a simple task... to pick up trash. Yet, it wasn’t just a one day project. Starting about two weeks earlier, the class discussed various options for helping make their community better. Ultimately they decided that picking up trash around the school grounds was a quick, simple, and visible way of accomplishing their goal. The rallying cry for their project was... “We’re going to TRASH this,” and so they did, describing it as exciting, awesome, amazing, great, and fun! As these children move through their school years, the hope is that these kinds of project will inspire them to become adults who care about the communities they live in. And, in the process, inspire the rest of us to do the same. Students involved included: Skye Sabin, Rydge Brandhagen, Ben Eldredge, Connor Peak, Alex Robles, Trey Smith, Tyson Walker, Priscilla Williamson.