Step four in the Root and Shoot process consist of two things,
measuring your impact and celebrating.
Throughout your campaign, you and your students will have
many opportunities to reflect on your work and the work of others.
Reflection allows students to think about and
communicate the significance of their actions.
Through reflection, they can apply the information they've acquired to a larger scale.
During each milestone, encourage students to reflect on their own beliefs,
new knowledge and connection to their community.
Here are several examples of critical milestone where
reflection is organically involved and indeed highly recommended.
Step one, getting engaged.
Ask students to reflect on the work that Dr. Jane has done and continues to do,
as well as the impact of other Roots and Shoots campaigns.
Is that work inspiring?
How and why?
Step two, map your community.
The community mapping guides provide reflection prompts
by asking students what they enjoy about their community,
how basic needs are met and what they identify as areas for improvement.
Additional reflection may include asking students to consider how
their project has an impact on all three community areas people,
animals and the environment.
And step three, taking action.
In addition to journaling, roleplaying,
group discussion and storytelling can also be reflective activities.
Some more creative examples we have seen include
smartphones for video journaling and starting blogs to record and publish their journey.
The goal is to take time throughout the campaign to look back on
the experiences and make personal connections to their activities.
And step four, celebrate.
Tracking accomplishments and making notes of what challenges were faced
helps young people to continuously improve and demonstrate what they have learned.
Celebrating and recognizing student success can also help them decide where to go
next and keep them engaged and excited over the long-term.
But let's focus on measuring your impact.
It is important before your project begins to define with
your students what success will look like and how you will measure it.
It is also important to acknowledge that success
sometimes means that a project didn't go as planned.
At the beginning of the campaign,
decide what data will be useful to demonstrate the impact of your specific campaign.
When identifying this data consider what
your goals are for the campaign and how you will determine,
document and share its success.
Throughout the campaign, have students mark milestones
and their progress against their goals and timelines.
Remember the example we gave of a horticulture teacher that
adapted her mapping exercise to focus on plants,
let's revisit that example and look at it in terms of measuring impact.
A horticulture teacher and her students developed a campaign around
plants and they had a plot of land that they needed to grow a garden on.
They adapted the traditional mapping exercise to
specifically map plants in their community through the lens of people,
animals and the environment,
and how these plants supported all three of these areas.
Based on their results, they decided on the garden to benefit butterflies.
They did an observational activity to see how
many and what types of butterflies called their community home.
Looking at this service campaign,
what is a good measure of impact?
Is it the number of people who are now aware of
local butterfly species and their habitats?
Is it the number of butterflies observed after completion of the service campaign?
Or, is it the number of new plants in the community that are beneficial to butterflies?
The answer, all of the above.