A Flint Water Crisis convo

A couple of weeks ago my students and I had an interesting chat about the goings on in Flint, Michigan, particularly about the water "situation". I showed them on Google Earth where Michigan was, including Flint. I showed them the Flint River and Lake Huron as well. We discussed what happened and showed some news clips.

I then took them to our class twitter page and showed them the hashtag  #Philly2Flint and we discussed  what people were doing to try and help. (There was a mini-lesson on hashtags)

Since then, they heard and learned a bit more from the news and from their parents. We talked again yesterday and today. Yesterday, they saw their teacher donate money to the cause. Today I showed them the receipt.

We discussed how many of the people are black. Many of today's discussions were sparked by a girl in particular who asked ALL OF THE RIGHT QUESTIONS!!

Why didn't they (those in charge) just turn the bad water off?

So, how was it that they were drinking bad water?

Why didn't they do anything?

So, the people that are giving money, how do they (organizations) make sure the people (of Flint) don't buy other stuff with the money and only the stuff dealing with the water?

And other questions...