Leaving My Comfort Zone: What I Did on Summer Break
In a speech I delivered to teachers at our convocation last year, I challenged them to do something outside of their comfort zone. Little did I know that on the last day of the school year, I would be boarding a plane to Nairobi, Kenya, to do something way out of my comfort zone. I would be “walking the walk” so to speak. I would be on a mission to help promote literacy and higher level thinking strategies to teachers in rural Kenya. Finding My Mission For many, mission trips are religious in nature or in direct response to natural disaster. For me, my mission stemmed from a global pen pal course I wrote and piloted. Through this course, I developed a relationship with Kenya Connect , a non-profit group whose mission is to keep kids in school with various programs for health and education. The population they serve are generally subsistence farming families that live in extreme poverty (no electricity, no running water, no access to healthcare). In...