Service learning comes to PR community

PRIEST RIVER — Service learning trips provide college students with an alternative spring break option, though the groups typically head toward warmer climates.

“But that means we are taking all of the knowledge pool that we have at our school and sending it to Florida or the Cayman Islands,” said Khaliela Wright, instructor and activities board advisor for the Spokane Falls Community College campus in Pullman.

In an effort to bring the service learning closer to home, Wright put together a team of five students who spent their spring break completing projects with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Kalispel Tribe in Bonner and Pend Oreille counties.

SFCC student Jasper Wemple said they learned about the different conservation efforts being done by the tribe, visited the fishery and saw a herd of buffalo.

“It was just a new experience to see the way the tribe does things,” Wemple said. “It is a different sort of community, different values.”

They were also supposed to plant some trees, but the weather didn’t cooperate, Wemple said. They had plenty to do, however, as Wright said the group spent an afternoon picking up garbage at Albeni Cove Recreation Area in Oldtown and Manresa Grotto off of LeClerc Road in Cusick. They also toured Albeni Falls Dam and participated in several workshops with the tribe throughout the week. No trip to the area would be complete without bear spray training, which each of the students participated in as well.

“None of these guys complained too much when we said we weren’t going to plant trees,” Wright said. “But we did get to get out and see some fish hatcheries, and see some bank restoration up at Priest Lake where they are doing some work in Big Meadow, so it was a lot of education — that was what the trip was designed to be.”

Elizabeth Tompos, an international student from the Philippines, said the hike to Big Meadow was one of her favorite parts of the trip. Even with the melting snow along the road they hiked, she said it was beautiful.

“It was a great experience because I saw how the engineers are doing their best to improve the creek, the flow of the water, and not to alter the landscape,” she said.

Yiting Wu, also an international student from China, said she was reluctant to go on the trip at first, but by Friday, she was glad she did.

“It was so much fun … it was a beautiful experience and I met so many nice friends here,” Wu said.

Wu said she enjoyed seeing the mountains, the rivers and the animals. She also really liked touring and seeing the inside of the dam at Albeni Falls, she said. She and Tompos have been in the United States since 2016. Wu is studying business at SFCC and Tomos is studying international affairs.

Jakkie Rivera, an accounting student at SFCC in Pullman, said she enjoyed the trip primarily because she didn’t know anything about the Kalispel Tribe previously. She also enjoyed learning about stewardship and sustainability, she said.

“And I actually found out something about me that I didn’t know I had, which was a creative side,” Rivera said.

The group would have breakout sessions in the afternoons and in one instance, Wright said, they were given a scenario. The year was 2050, they live on an island in the Pacific and as the water level rises, the entire island is submerged. As they were forced to leave the island, the students had to figure out a way to convince Australia to accept their tribe.

“They came up with some pretty good ideas,” Wright said.

Like Rivera, Tyler Oelke, said he also didn’t know anything about the Kalispel Tribe before this experience, so it was listening to some of the tribal members who are specialists in their area of expertise that was most intriguing to him. The tribal members explained their desire for conservation, he said, and the importance of keeping things alive and healthy and “all the ways that branches out,” such as forest health and prescribed burns, as well as fish management.

“And with so few people as well, just the huge amount of thought they have put into maintaining everything,” Oelke said.

After four days of work and education, Friday was set up for fun with swimming and rock climbing at the Camas Center for Community Wellness, and bowling at OK Lanes in Oldtown.

Wright, also a Priest River Lamanna High School alumna, said the inaugural trip was kept to a small group to see if it would be “beneficial and enjoyable” to the students, with the hope of growing the program in the future.

“Next year we are hoping to have 20 students,” she said as the week came to a successful close on Friday.

Mary Malone can be reached by email at mmalone@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow her on Twitter @MaryDailyBee.