Jaqi Cox

November ‘23

Expedition Night

November 30th was arguably the biggest night of the semester: “expedition night.”

Expeditionary learning is a model of learning that shows kids real world relevance to what they learn in the classroom, and it empowers them to use what they learn to impact the community. Expeditionary learning is an everyday thing at Doulos.

However, expedition night is not an ordinary night. Basically, it’s a night where we open the school to the entire Jarabacoa community and every single grade, in a creative way, has to showcase what they have worked on all year.

To do this, every grade has its own theme that every single class will relate to throughout the semester. For example, 10th grades theme was “design,” so in biology they learn about how God designed life different from nonliving matter. In geometry, they learn about architectural design- and served their community by designing the new Doulos property (more on that later)…and so on and so forth.

So after months of learning, and weeks of preparation (set design, script writing, blocking, line learning..etc) my homeroom class performed, and killed it and I am so proud of them.

What makes this night so special is that it is completely student led- I am just there to problem solve, advocate for them, and tweak things as needed. Basically, I just ensure that their vision comes to life, and that they put forth their best selves (sometimes easier said than done). So then, being able to watch them take ownership, come up with the idea, and create something to be so largely displayed in the community was pretty unmatched.

Again- they killlllllled it!!

The New Property

Long story short- the school that I work for outgrew its property and so its time to move campuses. Which means these past few months we have been working to fundraise a goal of $500,000 USD to purchase the new land to build on.

One of the ways we fundraised this month was by throwing a massive festival in the community. Specifically what I did was I hosted a skate camp with two of the other teachers at this fundraiser. Kids would give us a token, we would teach them anything from their stance on a board, to how to start doing tricks- and it was awesome.

Skateboarding has always been one of my favorite things. So to be able to use something that I love toward ministry is pretty much the most ideal way I would want to spend my time. &These skate sessions were a hit.

Each morning I get to skate inside the meeting room at work and its totally okay, in fact people have built us boxes and benches to skate on. Not only that, but there are a couple other teachers who also skateboard and used to run a skate club at school. And the more I skate around this campus the more I see how much kids are totally into it and so badly want a space where they can learn more.

So something I love about my job is that the skills and hobbies I have are celebrated, encouraged, and I even get to use them to serve others. So maybe pray that we get the funding for our new property and build a skate park on it ;)

Kidding, but if you would like to learn more about the new property click the “learn more” button below. & Please be in prayer for it!

Additionally, some of the other teachers and I are praying they do build a skate park in town here- so feel free to also join us in prayer for that.

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