Natural disasters and students

The concept of using natural disasters as a way of teaching students compassion for others is one which has promise. When a large scale natural disaster occurs, it dominates the news and captures the attention of people, at least for a while. I think about the Haiti earthquake, the tsunami in Indonesia, and Hurricane Katrina, all of which occurred during my teaching career. The staff of our school tried very hard to use these disasters as teachable moments for our students, and we began fund raising drives after each disaster. 

We were not very successful with the exception of the Haitian earthquake effort. To this day, we're not certain why that particular disaster struck a chord with our students. We don't have students from Haiti in our school, but we do have a large population from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, which are of course close neighbors to Haiti. This likely explains the connection. 

Our students live in poverty, some of them in extreme poverty. I am not sure if this causes the students to be less aware of others in need, or they simply just lack the means to respond in ways more well off students are able to. 

Unfortunately, the only way to find out will be when the next severe headline grabbing natural disaster comes along. I'm not really anxious for that day to come.