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Instead of sitting behind desks Thursday afternoon, a class of McClymonds High School students took to the streets of West Oakland to learn first-hand about one of their neighborhood’s biggest struggles — homelessness.

As part of an experimental new lesson, engineering and design teacher Satoshi Suga led his students down rows of tents, lean-tos draped with ragged tarps, and piles of trash, straight into the heart of one of the many bleak encampments that line Oakland’s sidewalks. There, just a few blocks from their school, the group of about 20 high school seniors tried to connect with their less-fortunate neighbors.

They were tasked with asking one main question: How can we help?

Suga hoped the afternoon would be an eye-opening way for his class to get some real-world experience and make a difference in other people’s lives.

“They see it every day because they walk to school every day, and they take BART every day,” he said. “They see that these people are sleeping in these tents under the bridge, but they don’t know how to deal with it.”

Suga didn’t expect his students to fix the many societal problems that lead to homelessness. Instead, he wanted them to ask the people they met about their day-to-day challenges, such as not being able to cook, lacking clean water, or fighting rat infestations. The students will take what they learned back to the classroom and design a product that could help solve one of those problems. Then they will return to the encampment to test it out.

Kimahla Zuberi, 18, decided to try and build an organizer on wheels to hold clothes and other belongings.

“It will be attachable to a bike,” he explained, “so if they need to move, they’ll have the opportunity to do that with all their belongings.”

Zuberi said he learned a lot from his conversations Thursday about what life is like in an encampment. Now he’s eager to put that information to good use.

“I’m just ready to help,” he said, “and do something to make them smile.”

Nikkia Boun, 17, was struck by the lack of water at the encampments for washing and drinking.

“I feel like there’s some way we could get water out there for them,” she said.

Along with Suga, West Oakland resident Nathan Moon, who does volunteer work with the homeless in his neighborhood, acted as the students’ guide Thursday, introducing them to encampment residents and showing them around. He came into their classroom last week to share some of his experiences and get them ready for Thursday’s trip.

On 23rd Street, the students gathered around a green tent pitched at the side of the busy road. They asked the woman inside, 45-year-old Catherine Fields, if she was getting enough to eat, whether she had problems with pests, and whether she had things to occupy her time every day. Fields told them she needed more food and things to do, but pests weren’t a problem. The students, wearing yellow safety vests, took careful notes on their clipboards.

After the students left, Fields said she thought it was nice that high school kids were trying to help. They might be more likely to follow through than adults, she said.

“Kids, they have hearts still,” Fields said. “They still have a lot of their morals and they have a lot of their values, and their innocence.”

But some of the conversations were difficult. When the first person emerged from a tarp-covered lean-to, several students in the group hung back, looking at each other nervously. Zuberi took charge and introduced himself politely. He asked what makes life on the streets hard.

“Everything’s pretty much hard,” said 42-year-old Arthur Long.

When Zuberi asked if there were any resources Long wished he had more of, Long said “housing.”

But the two eventually developed a rapport, bonding over football — Zuberi plays outside linebacker, and Long played inside linebacker.

Long is not homeless but was visiting his brother who lives in the encampment, and described some of the problems his brother faces — huge rats, freezing cold and garbage that piles up with nowhere to put it.

Long said he’s hesitant to trust do-gooders because he’s seen promises to help the homeless broken. But Thursday felt different.

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San Jose admits it can’t keep up with mounting piles of trash, illegal dumping “Seeing the kids do it, that’s something new,” he said. “It’s a beautiful thing.”

Suga chalked the day up as a success.

“It’s a shot in the dark, but I think the experience itself — going out there and talking to them, and dispelling a lot of the stereotypes that they might have about the homeless population — was a big enough win for me,” he said. “This is baby steps into a new curriculum.”