community service

In Phoenix Catholic schools, service is a given

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In the Diocese of Phoenix, Catholic school students learn service by sustained practice. At St. Mary’s High School volunteer service is not a requirement—because service is already a natural part of their lives.

At schools like St. John Bosco, “. . . it is ingrained in our mission statement as followers of Jesus. We believe we were put here on earth to use our gifts by serving others,” says 1st-grade teacher Jena Gump, according to The Catholic Sun. There is explicit religious reasoning for service—as you would expect in a religious school.

From preschool through 12th grade, students learn the importance of giving back and thinking beyond themselves.

The school encourages children to donate a can a week to the local St. Vincent de Paul Society food pantry. And when Hurricane Harvey hit Texas and the Gulf coast region last summer, the school collected 16 moving boxes full of donations.

How does this affect the character that students form in their years of schooling? That is the question that animated the School Cultures and Student Formation research project at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. The project investigated religious schools—Catholic, evangelical, Jewish, and Islamic—as well as non-religious independent schools, home schools, charter schools, and public schools. The findings appear in The Content of Their Character, edited by James Davison Hunter and Ryan S. Olson. They write of the Catholic schools studied that, “in keeping with Catholic tradition, service to one’s community, and especially service to the disadvantaged, featured prominently in school life.” Not surprisingly, “the most religiously orthodox school communities looked to the authority of God, whether mediated through scriptures, traditions, or broader communities of faith.”

The presence of an authoritative tradition and a supportive social environment made the formative environments of religious schools—like the diocese of Phoenix—unique. “I think the service and the leadership opportunities are what makes Catholic education different,” says Jena Gump.

When “giving back is a part of daily life” as Phoenix Catholic Schools seek, it is no wonder that schools like St. Mary’s don’t have to require service. They can’t imagine not doing it.

Building an integrated, sustained culture of service is a long, slow work. It takes at least a dozen years, but it’s worth the effort. Getting Smart offers “21 Tips for Connecting Learners to Their Community” for school leaders looking for a way to get started.

Michigan students safeguarding their peers through technology

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Four seniors at Michigan’s Midland High School are concerned about sexual assault on college campuses, so they built a smartphone app to keep students safe.

Seniors Gwynne Ozkan, Emma Jamrog, Preston Millward, and Gerard Bringard designed the app to track students as they move from “safe zones” to “danger zones” on college campuses and entered the idea in the Congressional App Challenge—a nationwide contest to inspire students to code.

Millwood, who coded the app to “make a difference in the world,” told NBC 25 he was honored when Michigan U.S. Rep. John Moolenaar sent the students an award letter in December recognizing their efforts.

“Most of the letters I get from colleges the signatures are all digital and not actual signatures, but from John Moolenaar I could tell it was an actual signature from him and that was really cool,” he said.

“The gratification we had when we received an actual award from our congressman really helped to show our hard work actually paying off,” Ozkan added.

NBC 25 explained how the app works:

In the app, campus security would designate safe zones—for example, a library or dorms. Students turn the app on when they leave safe zones and enter a danger zone, such as while walking alone at night.

If students don’t turn the app off when they reach a safe zone, the app alerts campus security of the student’s location, and security can call the student to check on him or her.

“We achieved our goal of what we want to do which is increase safety on college campuses, because we saw that as a really pertinent issue,” Ozkan said.

In essence, the app is the kind of authentic learning that allows students to use their skills to help others.

It’s a part of the give and take between students and their world that University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, describes in his book The Death of Character.

“I take it is a given that learning (as well as life itself) is dialectical or reciprocal in nature,” Hunter wrote. “The individual acts in the world, to be sure, but the world also acts back on the individual.”

Teachers in all subject areas can engage their students in authentic learning projects that address the real needs of their friends, classmates, and neighbors using resources available on Edutopia.org and other sites.

Educators at Crellin Elementary, for example, offer a framework that inspires student service work at their Oakland, Maryland school, where they said the focus is on helping students connect what they learn in the classroom with the real world.

How Montana Catholic school students build character through community service

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Serving others is a way of life at Montana’s Missoula Catholic Schools.

In kindergarten, students collect food during the week and help to sort it at a local food bank. Fourth-graders are hosting a sock drive to clothe area homeless. Others are helping the elderly with landscaping, repainting community signs, and clearing overgrown trails.

“They love doing stuff to help people in the community outside the school,” teacher Katie Wardsiani told the Missoulian, “to be part of that makes my heart feel so big.”

The tradition of serving the community is a bedrock of Catholic social teachings that dates back decades at Missoula Catholic Schools, which has modernized the practice to focus on personal development and structure for students to give back.

All students at Loyola Sacred Heart high school, for example, must complete a quota of community-service hours each year with a goal of working toward something bigger. By graduation, each student is expected to design, plan, and implement their own 40-hour “Senior Vision Project” aimed at improving the quality of life for others.

Senior adviser and teacher Dave Klein told the Missoulian, charity work wasn’t as structured when he attended Catholic schools, but the intent is for students to take ownership of their work and continue on after high school.

“It was more of a compulsory thing. There wasn’t an ownership. It was an obligation you did then, but didn’t do after that. It was something you checked off,” Klein said of past practices. “We hope our students will own it, feel empowered by it, feel proud of it.”

That seemed to be the situation with 17-year-old Luke Bledsoe, who cleared brush and branches along miles of the Lewis and Clark Trail in Idaho to make it more accessible.

“My goal was to try to let elderly people see the beautiful spots,” Bledsoe said, adding that his 85-year-old grandfather made the trek with him after he cleared out the overgrown trails. “He had been a district ranger and had probably never seen those spots before because it was so thick and hard to trudge through.”

Another senior, Kylie Esh, organized a workshop for elementary students to explore conscience. Speakers attended to help youngsters contemplate the role of silence in reconciliation, decision-making, and other topics of morality and faith.

“I wanted to better the faith of these kids,” Esh said. “A lot of schools do a senior project, but it’s about a topic. Giving back to the community is important.”

Other students like 17-year-old Kenna Guenther built on their previous service work for their Senior Vision Project. Guenther spent the summer helping elderly Missoula residents with landscaping and other chores, and the experience inspired her to help them document their family trees and offer wisdom to their grandchildren.

“It’s personal. It just is a lot more meaningful,” Guenther said of her work with the elderly. “They were happy and very positive people. It made me think about what I want to be like when I’m older.”

Guenther said the idea for her senior project stemmed from similarities she shared with those she helped over the summer, the Missoulian reports.

“I live really far from my family and they live really far from their families, so I’m going to interview them and make a family tree. And just anything they want their grandkids to know about them and life,” she said. “I’ll make it into a nice book for them around Christmas time.”

Catholic Schools researcher Carol Ann MacGregor presented the report Varieties of Moral Formation: Selected Preliminary Findings from a Landmark Research Study to the U.S. Department of Non-Public Education in 2016, which pointed out how ongoing disagreement among Catholic educators centers on whether compulsory community service as an element of schooling undermines its volunteer nature.

“Some (teachers) suggested that it would not be ‘service’ or ‘volunteering’ if it were required, while others argued that students needed the added structure,” MacGregor wrote.

Other schools have the same vision for formative community service.

The “portrait of a graduate” prepared by the Jesuit Schools Network provides a helpful starting place for educators to consider how community service—whether compulsory, voluntary, or some combination—can cultivate the strong character virtues students will carry with them throughout their lives.

Children helping the fight against leukemia

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Students at St. Paul Catholic School are working to cure cancer while also building character through the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Pennies for Patients program.

According to The Weirton Daily Times:

Pennies for Patients is a three-week program for elementary and middle schools where students collect change and raise funds online while learning about service and philanthropy. Thanks to Olive Garden, Student Series’ national partner, LLS has designed a series of lesson plans for teachers to use in the classroom in response to the growing trend of making serving learning and character education part of the curriculum. The lesson plans integrate the theme of LLS’s Pennies for Patients programs into all academic areas.

“By participating, not only will kids learn about making an impact, but about leadership, teamwork, philanthropy, and what ‘doing good’ for others can mean,” said LLS’s Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia Chapter Executive Director Tina Thompson. “It’s a program that is truly meaningful because kids learn that their efforts really make a difference. As children move through their years at school, they can grow with the Student Series.”

St. Paul Catholic is among thousands of schools across the United States participating in the LLS program, which focuses on helping students set and reach goals and design programs that boost community involvement in the fight against leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease, and myeloma.

“Since it began in 1993, Student Series has helped LLS invest almost $1 billion in research to advance breakthrough cancer treatments that are saving lives today, and improving the quality of life for patients and their families,” according to the news site.

This year, elementary students at the Weirton Catholic school raised $2,006.93 for cancer research.

But the money is only one benefit of the program.

“Character reflects the affirmation of our commitments to a larger community, the embrace of an ideal that attracts us, draws us, animates us, inspires us,” James Davison Hunter wrote in The Death of Character.

The qualities of leadership and philanthropy that the students of St. Paul Catholic School are demonstrating will only grow as the students’ commitment to helping others grows.

The Student Series program is one of several programs through LLS aimed at developing good character, leadership skills, and philanthropy. Others include Collect for Cures for high school students and a Students of the Year program.

The 2017–18 Student Series campaign includes a K-5 STEM curriculum aligned with Common Core learning standards that offers teachers hands-on experiential activities and other lessons on key skills.

The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues also offers lessons for students to think about their life’s purpose and goals, and help guide students to a fulfilling life that puts selfless service to others above pursuits of wealth, status, and power.

In one lesson, students are tasked with imagining their lives 70 or 80 years into the future, and to reflect on the things that motivated them by considering Aristotle’s vision of good character centered on courage, fairness, generosity, and other important virtues.

T.C. Williams student wins hero prize

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T.C. Williams High School student Ana Humphrey wanted to make a difference, and now she’s heralded as a hero.

The 16-year-old from Alexandria, VA, is one of 25 young people across North America recently named as a winner of the 2017 Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes, a distinction founded in 2001 by author T.A. Barron in honor of his mother.

“Nothing is more inspiring than stories about heroic people who have truly made a difference to the world,” Barron told The Connection. “That is the purpose of the Gloria Barron Prize: to shine the spotlight on these amazing young people so that their stories will inspire others.”

Humphrey’s story grew out of a hands-on life science class in 7th grade that involved work to restore a local wetland. It was a rewarding opportunity she wanted other students to experience, which compelled Humphrey to launch the Watershed Warriors Club.

The nonprofit pairs high schoolers with local 5th graders to promote environmental awareness through similar hands-on activities that incorporate science, technology, engineering, and math. Humphrey partnered with the National Park Service and the local Four Mile Run Conservancy, crafted lesson plans, and reached out to area elementary schools. Within three years, the group engaged nearly 300 mostly low-income, minority students at four elementary schools, and is now working to expand the program to other high schools.

“I now know, given the tools and experience, that students of all ages can become drivers of change in their community,” said Humphrey as she received the Barron Prize.

Without people like Humphrey who embody virtues, it’s almost impossible to embody them yourself. We can’t just say “work harder, be nicer.” We are inspired by people who have done good things despite great adversity.

“Character reflects the affirmation of our commitments to a larger community, the embrace of an ideal that attracts us, draws us, animates us, inspires us,” wrote James Davison Hunter in The Death of Character. Heroes demonstrate what can happen when a person lives for something beyond the self. Almost always we see that true heroism comes from a long obedience in the same direction.

Character is formed intentionally when students are led to think about their life’s purpose and goals through an exercise like this one from the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues.

©2017 Advanced Studies in Culture

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