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Section: August 1998

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This summer's NEA Representative Assembly in New Orleans gave some of our higher education members a wonderful opportunity to engage in an exercise of inter-generation activism with colleagues from the NEA Student Program and NEA-Retired.

At 7:30 a.m. on a steamy Tuesday, three buses left the convention hotel in downtown New Orleans and headed out for Beauregard Middle School in rural St. Bernard Parish.

We painted lockers, reconstructed playground benches, planted a garden, decorated bulletin boards, and cleaned and scraped. One of our higher education members brought his tools and used them to rebuild broken benches and level wobbly desks and chairs.

In seven hours of work, three generations of NEA members created an exciting, colorful learning place for the children of St. Bernard Parish.

When the work was finally done, every single member of the local school committee came out to thank us. It felt good.

I invite more of our higher education representatives to join us in a similar project during next year's RA in Orlando. It's guaranteed to make you feel better than a trip to Disneyworld.

Rachel Hendrickson is an NEA higher education coordinator.