According to Northshore Junior High teacher Becky Berger, the current drive to buy a cow (or maybe some chickens) might be the largest service-learning project her students, past or present, have ever undertaken.

“They all did a really good job and deserve a lot of credit,” Berger said of the 28 ninth-grade special-education students who involved the entire Bothell school in a spare-change drive aimed at aiding Heifer International.

The worldwide charity provides livestock and farming education for underprivileged communities.

Under the direction of three education students from Seattle University, Berger’s students have done everything from invading lunch rooms looking for donations to, more ambitiously, putting together a two-minute video on Heifer International, which was shown throughout the school.

In the video, one student dressed as a chicken, while another dressed as a cow.

An alum of Seattle University herself, Berger invites current university education students to her classroom twice each year to implement service-learning programs.

“They love it,” Berger said of her Northshore students and the learning projects. For the most part, the students get to pick what projects they take on.

Seattle University’s Jamie Stokes is one of the teaching students who visited Northshore’s classrooms this time around, taking over Berger’s global-issues class. Berger described the course as kind of a model United Nations in which students learn about global organizations. Berger added her charges had heard a little about Heifer International and the idea of helping animals, as well as people, appealed to them. Stokes said the theme of the project was changing the world, which led students to launch their spare-change drive.

As of just prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, the students had taken in roughly $230, according to Stokes. The drive ended this week and it isn’t known if students reached their ultimate goal of $500, enough to fund the purchase of a cow by Heifer International.

If they didn’t quite make it, any funds raised can go toward purchasing chickens, which still can be very helpful for struggling agricultural communities, Stokes said.

“They (the students) have responded quite well,” she added.

Stokes said that service learning in general is a means to extend book learning into the real world, even half-way around the world.

“Northshore can have an effect in a far-off spot,” Stokes said, a thought local students might not have had previously.

Stokes said the livestock provided small communities by Heifer International can have a stabilizing effect on those communities, helping to make them self-sustaining. The ultimate goal is for those communities to grow enough to be able to offer regular, public-school education to local children. According to Stokes, at this point, there is no way to know where aid from Northshore might end up.

In the past, Berger said Northshore service projects have involved everything from helping senior citizens to providing towels for the Seattle Humane Society.