When Rachel Stephen ’26 traveled to New Orleans for her immersive service-learning trip, she expected to help build a house from the ground up. What she found instead was a lesson in the quiet, persistent work that remains two decades after a disaster.

The class, “Living Large: Spiritual Design in Small-Space Living,” is taught by religions and arts teacher Susan Ross P’25 and English teacher Edna Valdepeñas P’15,’18,’19,’24. The course studies the Tiny House Movement, focusing on the philosophical foundations and design. Students leave this course with a design plan for their own tiny home. This year, with a service and travel component, the course expanded on this idea, and students worked on tiny homes already in production in the real world. 

The course provided students with educational and experiential opportunities to examine their roles and responsibilities within the communities they inhabit. As part of the curriculum, students participated in a two-week service project with Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans. There, they learned firsthand about the long-term rebuilding process following 2005’s Hurricane Katrina and deepened their understanding of the relationship between human geography and the climate crisis. The experience connected abstract classroom discussions to lived experience. Upon returning home, students spent the final three days of the term reflecting on their work through journaling and discussion. 

The physical reality of the trip was different than Rachel had imagined. Rather than raising frames, she found herself knee-deep in meticulous finishing tasks of home construction — tasks that require more patience than power.

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“A part of me unrealistically thought we’d start from scratch, but there were many long steps that couldn’t be summed up in six days of service,” Rachel said. “In reality, we leaned more towards the finishing parts of building houses — with primers and paints, putting furniture back and the clean-up afterwards.”

While the work was grueling, the motivation was personal. Volunteering with Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans, Rachel and her schoolmates worked on the home of a man who had been struggling to fully repair his property since the hurricane.

“The man who lived there hadn’t had enough money to get his house fully repaired after the hurricane hit,” she said. “While we didn’t meet him in person, I’m sure he was very grateful for the work we had done.”

The trip opened Rachel’s eyes to a sobering truth: that while the world’s headlines have moved on from Hurricane Katrina, the need in New Orleans has not been fully addressed. She observed a gap between the dwindling number of volunteers and the persistent demand for housing.

“20 years after the incident, the number of organizations and volunteers went down, but the demand for help didn’t,” she said. “It was saddening, but I was glad to know that organizations were out there helping out in any way they could. It shows that the community is still looking out for each other.”

Rachel learned that service isn’t always about the heavy lifting; it’s about having the discipline to finish what others cannot. “It doesn’t seem like much, but you can notice the big difference when you take time to step back and look at the work you’ve done,” she said.