For our teaching project, we decided to spread awareness about homelessness by bringing a report of facts to our peers at school. The reason we chose to do so is because we believe that the first step to teaching others about a problem in society is to first demonstrate that there is in fact a problem. We had to recognize that many of our peers would probably have little knowledge on the topic of homelessness, just as we did in the beginning of the semester. So that being said, we decided that we needed to find a way to bring the epidemic to others’ attention. Not only did we have to bring it to their attention, but we also had the task of explaining why homelessness is an epidemic in our present day society.

As for the audience of our teaching project, we chose to teach our peers at the University of Redlands. There were a number of reasons why we decided on this audience. The first reason was that it was simpler to teach our peers, since they are typically at the same level of education as ourselves. This meant that we did not have to design an elaborate teaching plan for professors or staff, nor did we have to oversimplify the material in order to teach youth.  Choosing to educate our peers was also more convenient because they are right here on campus. Once we had our audience, we had to plan out how exactly we were going to present the information. We had to plan it so that the students would be interested in learning about homelessness. We researched homelessness in the San Bernardino County area. This way, the information would be more personal to the students since it is in the area of which they go to school. Not only did we research homelessness in the area, but we also collected data on college students and homelessness. The data that was collected was astounding, and we had hopes that our peer would be just as appalled as we were. So that led us to creating a fact filled sheet with quick facts about homelessness in San Bernardino county. A fact sheet seemed like a good idea so that students can quickly and effortlessly receive the information we provided. For the fact sheet, we chose alarming and eye catching statistics in order to thoroughly grab the reader’s attention. These statistics concerned homelessness among children and students, which we knew would interest the readers. We planned on passing out printed copies of the fact sheet in front of the commons area during peak busy hours. That way we would be able to attempt to get the word out to as many students and staff  as possible. We also planned to keep a printed copy of the full report in case any of the students had any questions or wanted to read over the report.

Rebecca Hulbert

Karina Fernandez