Palie Cantu
By Palie Cantu
Middle School Math Teacher
March 27, 2019
This Lent, Forest Ridge is participating in the Catholic Relief Services Rice Bowl project. Catholic Relief Services (CRS) was founded in 1943 by the United States Catholic Bishops to serve World War II survivors in Europe. It is now a world-wide humanitarian organization reaching over 130 million people in more that 100 countries on five continents.
Each week during Lent, a different department is exploring the work of CRS. This week, Ms. Cantu’s Algebra 1 class looked at the work CRS is doing Building Homes and Livelihoods in Darfur. Students worked in groups to create posters to inform the school community about the impact their rice bowl donations could have on the lives of people in Darfur. One student remarked, “now this is really real-world math!”
Students were asked to find the answers to the following questions:
- There are about 100 employees and 400 students at Forest Ridge. If everyone at FR donated 25 cents each day for the 40 days of Lent, how many bricks could we buy?
- How many one-room houses would that build?
- If there was a village with 15 families, how much would every person at FR need to donate every day of Lent to build 15 one-room houses for that entire village?
The answers to these questions might surprise you!
- Forest Ridge Blog