When St. Francis High School senior David Lawrence Chang traveled to New Orleans with the school’s immersion program, he didn’t know what to expect. A week later, he had a new understanding of community service and climate change.
From May 29 through June 4, Chang joined nine other students (juniors and seniors) and two teacher chaperones on the trip, which partnered with the St. Bernard Project, a hurricane relief organization. Students volunteered at a food kitchen, built hurricane-resistant housing, nailed rivets onto windows and painted homes for residents affected by past storms, including Hurricane Katrina.
“I went there with a blank slate,” Chang said.
The Los Altos resident said he had originally pictured New Orleans to be similar to the Bay Area, but he was struck to see areas that had not fully recovered from hurricane damage 20 years ago.
“When I arrived, the roads were very bumpy and I thought maybe they didn’t have a lot of money to fix the roads,” he said.
Chang added that he later learned that frequent flooding continues to damage infrastructure, leaving potholes across the city.
He said the experience also shifted his perspective on why people remain in disaster-prone areas.
“At first I wondered, if this city is so prone to natural disasters, why would people actually live there?” Chang said. “But the culture is so rich that it’s like, how could anybody who grew up here want to leave? The culture is part of the location, tied to who they are.”
During the trip, the students also visited a fellow Holy Cross High School in New Orleans that was rebuilt and relocated after Hurricane Katrina. Visiting both the ruined campus and the new building with the students, St. Francis activities director and teacher Grant Lucas said the experience helped them connect with peers at another Holy Cross school and understand the impact of the disaster.
“You see things on the news and you’re not sure if you can relate, but when you take high school kids from a Holy Cross school in Mountain View and show them students in New Orleans, that’s something they can directly relate to,” he said. “They understand some of the same principles and philosophies that both of our schools are built on.”
Lucas, a 2016 St. Francis graduate who oversees the immersion program, said the school offers about a dozen such trips each year, both domestic and international. Students can apply to participate during spring break or over summer, with each trip focusing on service and cultural exchange.
“You can talk about whatever you want in the classroom, but actually putting your feet on the ground at a different location – walking through the ruins of one high school and then meeting the people from the new one – you get a sense of how that feels for a community,” Lucas said.
Lucas added that he went on the same immersion trip as a junior. As part of this year’s program, he took students to a house he had helped build years earlier to show the long-term impact of service.
“It was impactful for the students as well, because when we got to the location, the house was still there, it looked nice and there was a family living in it,” Lucas said. “You might be here for only a week, getting just a taste of what this community is like and what they go through. But the work you’re doing right now is impactful. It’s going to support a family and a community for decades.”
For Chang, the biggest takeaway was the importance of preparing for natural disasters and acknowledging climate change.
“From a perspective in Los Altos, we might not have hurricanes, but we do have fires, so don’t think of climate change as a dumb problem,” he said. “Everybody is affected in one way or another, no matter where you are.”
Through these immersion trips, Lucas said he hopes all students walk away with a similar sense of empathy and an expanded worldview.
“Roll up your sleeves, get some paint,” he said. “Living with a community and doing service for a week can open up your empathy and change the way you see the world and the people in it.”
