Pizitz raises more than $7K to drill well in Africa

At the end of the school year, Pizitz Middle School celebrated raising $7,000 to drill a clean-water well in Africa. 

Students and staff are dedicating the well to beloved library assistant Sandy Waldrop who daily gave a “cup of water” to everyone with her kind encouragement and servant’s heart. Pizitz students surpassed their goal of $6,000 by weaving together authentic learning opportunities with creative service projects and demonstrated a deep desire to be difference-makers in the world.

Engaging students with compelling statistics from locations as near as Flint, Michigan, and California to distant areas such as Sudan and South Africa, Diane McAliley challenged students to use their gifts to be difference-makers in their world. 

Brandon Gossett of Neverthirst inspired them to be a part of ending the clean water crisis throughout the world.  Meredith Hanson, principal of Pizitz, helped get an Alabama legislative grant to support learning experiences that were foundational the project.

In October, the award-winning Pizitz Band held a concert to benefit the “Be the Drop” campaign.  Learning and performing arrangements with water-related themes, the band raised more than $700 for the project.  

The Pizitz Pirivia yearbook staff held a T-shirt design contest and sold unique “Be the Drop that Fills a Bucket” shirts to raise more than $650. 

Beth Uhlman and the physical education staff organized a faculty-student volleyball challenge to help fund research for pediatric cancer and support the Be the Drop that Fills a Bucket well project, raising more than $1,000.

Throughout the year, nearly 1,200 students at Pizitz Middle School were engaged in water-related learning experiences and service projects. For instance, sixth-grade Earth science students designed and tested water filters from sand, gravel, charcoal and other natural resources. 

Addressing the question, “What’s in our water?”, eighth-grade physical science students incorporated the school’s water emphasis into their chemistry unit. Seventh-grade life science students used nearby water to study the micro-environment of living organisms in water. Phil VanderKamp, a sixth-grade social studies teacher, Eco Club sponsor and Cahaba Riverkeeper, gave students the opportunity to test the water quality of nearby creeks and streams and explore Alabama’s watershed and how the pollution affects our water sources.

Through English language arts, sixth-grade students studied a compelling novel, “Long Walk to Water,” which is a dual-narrative that connects a girl struggling through the current water accessibility crisis in South Sudan to a boy caught in the middle of civil war and genocide during the 1980s in Sub-Saharan Africa. Seventh-grade English students read “Lost Boy, Lost Girl” and focused on the real and metaphoric thirst for water and freedom in Sudan during the past three decades. 

Eighth-grade ancient history students focused on River Valley Civilizations, the birthplace of modern civilization at the sides of four great rivers. Throughout the year, eighth-grade students studied the impact of accessibility to fresh water in the ancient cultures of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, India and North Africa.  

German teacher Frau Rogers used resources from Aqua Agents at Goethe Institute in Hamburg to tackle questions and use action-oriented thinking to solve problems. 

“The scope of this project and its impact has been remarkable,” McAliley said.  “Every student in our school was immersed in learning about water and was given an opportunity to make a tangible difference in the lives of people impacted by water access issues.”

– Submitted by Whit McGhee.