High school junior Margot Paul of Lynnfield returned from New Orleans last week after joining 16 of her classmates in refurbishing homes devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

The students attend Gann Academy, The New Jewish High School of Greater Boston, which organized the trip as part of its annual Exploration Week. Other options for off-campus study were star-gazing in New Mexico, discovering the arts, focusing on politics, travel abroad or doing nature projects.

Margot Paul chose to go to New Orleans because she had seen pictures of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when it hit the southern coast of the United States in August 2005, and “wanted to make an impact” on the situation there.

Paul’s team, accompanied by Swampscott resident Marc Winer, a ninth and tenth grade resource specialist at Gann, tore up and replaced floorboards and walls in one house, and then removed truck-loads of debris including clothes, appliances and trash from another in the Lower Ninth Ward.

The mail was still in the mailbox from when the family fled, Paul said. It surprised her that she would be performing the first cleanup on a house over four years after the disaster. Later, the students applied plaster to dry-wall on another house in St. Bernard’s Parish, preparing it for painting.

Winer said that the groups that supervise the volunteers, the Lower Ninth Ward Project and the St. Bernard’s Project, divide what needs to be done into about 100 tasks that can be easily learned and accomplished by outside helpers. It takes from $12,000-$15,000 and 12 weeks of labor to make a damaged house habitable.

“The damage was so apparent,” said Winer of the city. He learned that at least 16,000 homes needed to be repaired in one parish alone.

The students saw some of the fruits of their labor. During their stay, they attended a party marking the 200th home restoration by the St. Bernard’s Parish Project. The owner, an elderly gentleman, returned to occupy it, tearfully expressing to the volunteers, “Without you working here, I wouldn’t have a place to live.”

To experience first-hand his gratitude deeply impressed Paul.

The city residents they met were friendly and frequently showed their appreciation for the group’s work. Another Gann Academy team was invited into the home of a grateful family for a meal.

In addition, the pupils were hosted for Shabbat by the Jewish community of Metairie, 14 miles outside of New Orleans, and they learned how Hurricane Katrina affected the people’s lives there.

The Gann teenagers met CNN Reporter Anderson Cooper, who was working on a piece, as well as Hillel students and AmeriCorps participants who were contributing their energies toward rebuilding the city.

Throughout the week, students kept journals and in the evenings met to discuss what they had seen. Winer noticed that the teens developed an important emotional reaction to the reality there. He found that they began to weigh their personal needs, such as planning a trip to a sporting event, in proportion to what they saw in New Orleans. As a teacher, facilitating this transformation and imparting the knowledge of what took place during such a major catastrophe, he found that bringing the students into the world to learn was the most effective way to make these lessons happen.

The experience changed Margot Paul’s outlook on community service.

“Every person is needed because there is so much work to be done,” she said. She would like to return to New Orleans to continue restoring homes and to raise awareness among others about the continued plight of its citizens, many who have been forced to live elsewhere in the country. Winer hopes to go on another Exploration Week trip to New Orleans.

Exploration Week is in its third year. It was started by Gann chemistry teacher, Joshua Neudel, in response to the great humanitarian need.