service

American Legion connects students with local officials during County Government Day

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Veterans recently teamed up with the American Legion to introduce high school students to the intimate workings of county government, an annual tradition that connects students with public officials in their community.

John Brehm, director of Veterans Affairs for Scotts Bluff and Banner counties, worked with the American Legion to bring in high school civics students from Scottsbluff, Gering, Mitchell and Morrill into county courthouses and government buildings for introductions in March, the Scottsbluff Star-Herald reports.

The day-long field trip dubbed County Government Day included a flag presentation and remarks from former American Legion state commander Beth Linn, as well as a mock trial with county Judge Kris Mickey.

“Your local government is the foundation of this country,” Linn said. “Whatever happens at your local government affects you for the rest of your life and affects what happens at the regional level.”

Research at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture suggests the importance of this kind of hands on informal education in local civics. Experience is always the best teacher. Case studies consistently show, states Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture leaders James Hunter and Ryan Olson, “the importance of the informal articulation of a moral culture through the example of teachers and other adults in the school community.”

“We know that these guys are our future and we’ve got to get them educated,” Beth Linn told the news site. “We’re a non-partisan organization. We don’t care whichever way they vote, they just need to know the basics so they can be educated.”

Scottsbluff High School social studies teacher Matt Parsley told the Star-Herald the event offers a lot more than simply an opportunity for his American government students to gain valuable real life experience with county officials.

“I also think there’s a patriotic side to it, that they understand service,” he said. “I think they gain some respect for the Legion and those who have served in the military.”

Mitchell junior Hunter Lenley said he learned a lot at the County Government Day, particularly during a presentation by a local probation officer.

“He did a really good job of explaining everything,” Lenley said. “I really didn’t understand how probation and all that works, but he really explained how the states of probation goes.”

Teachers and principals working to strengthen moral and citizenship formation in their students can find information and strategies at the UK’s The Jubilee Centre.  In The Jubilee Centre’s own words, the following illustrates how the Centre views it work.  “The Jubilee Centre is a pioneering interdisciplinary research centre on character, virtues and values in the interest of human flourishing.  The Centre is a leading informant on policy and practice through its extensive range of projects contributes to a renewal of character virtues in both individuals and society.”

Student robotics team helps Iraq War veteran develop prosthetic hand

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Students on the Beyer High School robotics team wanted to make a difference, and an Iraq War veteran from Stockton is grateful for their efforts.

The Modesto, California students recently presented Jose Jauregui with a prosthetic hand they designed from scratch with the goal of helping the veteran to play softball again. Jauregui lost his left hand during an explosion in Iraq in 2005, and a doctor familiar with the robotics team’s work connected him with the students, KCRA reports.

The team wanted to design a hand that was strong enough to catch a ball and lean enough to fit inside a baseball glove, but their first 3-D printed hand didn’t quite fit the bill. With their second iteration, Jauregui managed to play catch with students in April.

“Going into it we didn’t know much, it was hard to figure everything out, which is why we had to go through a second attempt, making sure that the numbers were right,” junior Mark Wright told CBS Sacramento.

Students are still working to finalize their design, but Jauregui said he’s looking forward to doing a lot of things he couldn’t before. “I think, it would be amazing, this is just the beginning really,” he said. “It’s advancing so fast.”

“I think it’s really cool that they’re involved in stuff like this. It looks hard to do and really time consuming,” Jauregui told KCRA. “I appreciate that they’re doing this for me. Hopefully, we get a lot of use out of this.”

Moral development researcher Jeffrey Guhin suggests that sometimes there is a tension between self-actualization and compassion. Jeffrey Guhin, writing in The Content of Their Character, concludes, “Compassion only makes sense to the degree that it is a means to self-actualizing.” Here the concrete nature of assisting Jose Jauregui with a hand clearly connected the dots.

Freshman Danielle Haubrich said she’s already learned a valuable lesson.

“It’s almost indescribable being able to see that you’re making a change,” she said, “not only for someone, but also to change the community in the process.”

Haubrich told Fox 40 she hopes the project will inspire others “to overcome these limitations by using science, technology, engineering, 3D printing, to make themselves these prosthetics.”

Jauregui and the robotics team aren’t the only ones who recognize the potential.

The project also received honors at the Idaho Regional FIRST Robotics Competition in April, according to the news site.

Teachers and principals working to strengthen moral and citizenship formation in their students can find information and strategies at the UK’s The Jubilee Centre. In The Jubilee Centre’s own words, the following illustrates how they view their work.  “The Jubilee Centre is a pioneering interdisciplinary research centre on character, virtues and values in the interest of human flourishing.  The Centre is a leading informant on policy and practice through its extensive range of projects contributes to a renewal of character virtues in both individuals and societies.

Benchmark charter school focuses students on gratitude, service, and patriotism

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Students at Benchmark School in Phoenix seem to stand out, in a good way.

“Everyone can tell a Benchmark student,” Carole Challoner, one of the public charter school’s founders, told the American Thinker. “Our students are kind, they are respectful, they are caring, and they love their country.”

Challoner started the school with fellow teacher Barbara Darroch, investing their own money to buy the land and buildings, to develop Benchmark with a clear vision of what they wanted to do differently than other schools. Both Challoner and Darroch grew up overseas, with Challoner’s father in the U.S. Air Force and Darroch’s in the oil business, and their childhood experiences shaped how they approach the classroom.

Researchers at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture found that the willingness to “be different” is an important feature of creating a “thick” moral culture in a school. In The Content of Their Character they wrote, “All of the charter schools in this sample saw themselves as different from the local public schools in culture and a focus on academic achievement…. To this end, they deliberately constructed their notions of the ‘good person’ as countercultural to their perception of a public school’s.” This willingness to embrace a countercultural stance served to enhance the moral ethos of the school.

The Institute for Advanced Studies’ latest book, The Content of Their Character, provides findings of the Institute’s research into ten sectors of K-12 high school across America regarding moral and citizenship formation of high school students.  The sectors studied were as follows:  urban public high schools, rural public high schools, charters, evangelical schools, Catholic schools, Jewish and Muslim schools, prestigious independent schools, alternative pedagogy schools and homeschooling.

“We know how lucky our students are to have been born in this wonderful country, and it is our responsibility to make sure they never forget that,” Challoner said.

Throughout the school year, various school events focus on inspiring students with opportunities for gratitude, service and patriotism – experiences that reinforce daily classroom lessons about the meaning of the Pledge of Allegiance, protecting the Constitution, the country’s founding fathers, and how citizenship and character revolve around helping others.

Students take turns leading the school in the daily Pledge, collect supplies for deployed military troops, honor veterans with essays and patriotic performances, and visit the National Memorial Cemetery to lay wreaths on graves without them.

Classrooms adopt military families during Christmas to help with presents and food, students compete in essay contests for Veterans Day and Memorial Day, and participate in several special events throughout the year. One event honors those who died in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks by hoisting two flags in remembrance. The flags are given to two students at the end of the year that exemplify good character and citizenship.

In another special event, the school hosts a naturalization ceremony for new citizens, who take an Oath of Allegiance and speak with students about why they wanted to become Americans. The yearly tradition has featured folks from Venezuela, Bosnia, and African countries, according to the American Thinker.

The intense focus on character and citizenship has led to tremendous academic success, Challoner said, with scores twice the state average in some subjects.

Teachers and principals wanting to strengthen moral and citizenship formation in their students can find information and strategies at the UK’s Jubilee Centre.

VA school staff form ‘Men of Vision and Purpose’ through mentorship, service work

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Lafayette High School employees Archie Jefferson, William Capers and Andre McLaughlin are developing “Men of Vision and Purpose.”

“Our job as mentors for these young men is not to tell them what to do,” Jefferson, a student advancement coach at Lafayette, told the Williamsburg Yorktown Daily. “Our job is to make sure we create an environment where they feel like they can do anything.”

The three men created the Men of Vision and Purpose mentoring program at the Virginia school in 2016 in response to rising truancy rates and disciplinary problems that were taking a toll on academics.

The men began meeting with male students before class in the school’s gym once a week for teamwork exercises and character building activities, and the program has since swelled to 80 students.

McLaughlin, a master police officer with James City County and the school’s resource officer, told the Daily the intent is to build a bond between school security and students, while helping them to hold themselves accountable for showing up and participating in school.

Students are expected to read copies of Capers’ motivational book “Breaking the Limits,” and to take part in local service projects and fundraisers. Jefferson, Capers and McLaughlin, meanwhile, strive to set an example of how hard work and dedication builds character through their own endeavors outside of school as independent business owners.

“Building relationships with these students is what fuels me on a daily basis,” McLaughlin said.

“What we are looking to do is change the person,” Jefferson added. “We want to touch your life. We want to hold your heart.”

While the program is still relatively new, it recently won support in the form of a $2,000 Innovative Learning Grant from the WJCC Schools Foundation, which funds programs developed by district employees to improve student support services.

Men and manliness have been under assault in recent decades. This is particularly the case in communities dominated by people of color. The success of this program is its holistic mentorship, it’s connecting of teamwork and character, and its encouragement of individual agency. There is a long history in America of celebrating “self-made” men, even though the idea itself is a myth. Historian Jim Cullen, writing in The Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture’s The Hedgehog Review, “Problems and Promises of the Self-Made Myth,” warns, “Given the prevalence of past and present societies in which individual citizens are expected to orient their lives around something other than the self, it is an open, and increasingly pressing, question how long the United States can maintain a sense of cohesion and purpose around the self-made man in an economic formulation untethered to a notion of a greater good.”  This program is seeking to bridge that gap.

Capers told the Daily the crew is now working to expand the program to other schools and develop materials for younger students.

“We want this in as many schools as possible,” Jefferson said. “We are passionate about this. This is not something we do. This is who we are.”

Teachers and principals interested in strengthening moral and character formation in their school can find information and support about this work at the UK’s The Jubilee Centre.

Sixth grader launches nonprofit to serve up compassion for the homeless

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Marlon Miller Jr. is a Georgia sixth-grader on a mission, and he recently launched a nonprofit to take it to the next level.

Miller first learned about severe poverty when he watched his father give food to a homeless man six years ago, an experience that sparked a passion in the young boy that hasn’t waned since.

“We answered his questions and explained to him why some people live on the streets,” Miller’s mother, Tawanda Miller, told the Henry Herald.

It wasn’t enough.

For years Miller constantly pleaded for money for snacks and toiletry supplies to pass out to the homeless, but his mother couldn’t keep up with the demands. “I told him he needed to find a way to raise money on his own to purchase items,” she said. So that’s exactly what he did.

Miller, now in sixth grade at Union Grove Middle School, launched his own nonprofit last year called Deuce Hands, and he has held his first fundraiser – an ugly Christmas sweater party – in December. He also posted fliers at local businesses to solicit donations, and set up social media accounts for Deuce Hands to get the word out online.

“I knew he was serious when he came home with a list of homeless shelters,” his mother Tawamda said.

The 11-year-old uses the money raised to buy toothpaste, a toothbrush, soap, deodorant, water and snacks that he packages in what he calls “compassion bags.” Miller also employs his six-year-old sister Madison to help hand out the bags and volunteering at two events for the homeless each month, according to the Herald.

“I feel I’m lucky to be where I am,” he said, adding that he’s learned valuable lessons from the folks he’s met on the streets. “Homeless people really need help.”

This heartening story shows the influence of a father, the importance in finding one’s passion, and applying it to practical action. It is not an isolated story in urban public schools today. Researchers at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture found that effective urban public schools emphasized for critical moral ideas: 1. self-actualization, 2. grit, 3. respect, and 4. compassion. They state, “The moral framework and language for each of these tended to be a combination of solidarity for teachers and individual self-expression for students.”[1]

“We shouldn’t judge the homeless because they are usually good people who ended up in a bad situation,” Miller said.

Teachers and principals interested in strengthening moral formation in their students will find strategies and resources at the UK’s Jubilee Centre.

[1] Hunter, James Davison and Ryan S. Olson. The Content of Their Character (Finstock & Tew Publishers, 2018), p. 28.

Students decide where the money goes

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In Fulton, Illinois each homeroom at River Bend Middle School received $100 to give back to the community. The only catch is that it had to have a personal connection to students.

Since the beginning of the school year, Principal Kathleen Schipper has allocated Wednesdays for working on community projects. She had only one stipulation for the students’ $100 contribution: Make it relatable. She didn’t want the donations to go toward a broad effort. Rather, she wanted a personal connection. The projects were kept secret—even Schipper had no idea what the students were doing.

Donations were made to cancer research and the nearby White Oaks Therapeutic Equestrian Center, which provides programs to the physically and mentally disabled. Two homerooms made fleece blankets for a children’s hospital and the Harbor Crest Nursing Home. Eighth-graders made a blanket for a therapy dog. The Student Council filled boxes with supplies and amenities for new students on their first day of school. A 6th-grade class donated money to the Wounded Warrior Project and shared stories of loved ones in the military.

Some classes became inspired by their peers’ personal tragedies or maladies, donating, for example, to brain tumor awareness.

Teachers report that students seem to have a clear concept of volunteerism and philanthropy. Special Education teacher Connie Hoffman sees the school going forward with community involvement. “This is not a one-shot thing,” she told the Clinton Herald. “Mrs. Schipper would be proud.”

Schools are full of rules, rewards, and consequences. All of these are in place in order to bring children to the place where they freely and willingly choose the good without the need for enticements. Yet sometimes schools neglect to give children this freedom and responsibility.

Principal Kathleen Schipper is nurturing character in her students by providing the opportunity to do good in what Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture founder James Davison Hunter, calls moral autonomy. Hunter explains it this way in The Death of Character: “Character implies the moral autonomy of the individual in his or her capacity to freely make ethical decisions. The reason, very simply, is that controlled behavior cannot be moral behavior for it removes the element of discretion and judgment.”

Teachers can give students this moral autonomy in designing service projects or gifts for the good of the community with this Advisory in Action lesson from Learning to Give.

TN high school students create opportunities for others

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Students at a Tennessee high school are using funds from a grant they won to identify community needs and to launch projects to achieve results.

In 2015 Elizabethton High School sociology students—on the basis of a 70-page proposal—were awarded $200,000 from the XQ Institute, which was funded by Laurene Powell Jobs, the billionaire widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. XQ co-founder Russlynn H. Ali is a former Education Department assistant secretary for civil rights in the Obama administration. The stated purpose of XQ’s Super School project is to “disrupt” the American high school and redesign it for the 21st century.

The students at Elizabethton took their club name, the Bartleby Community Improvement Class, from Herman Melville’s short story Bartleby the Scrivener, a narrative they interpreted to be about a man who refused to do things that went against his conscience even when society expected those things from him. The Bartleby program encourages students to think about what education should be, and not just to accept a given curriculum.

Current projects include creating murals, a walking tour, trail cleanup, book clubs, veteran assistance, the design of a hostel on the Appalachian Trail, and a mental health support group. Next semester, 15 students will participate in the Bartleby Entrepreneurship Class, in which they will plan and establish businesses that will fill economic gaps.

The Bartleby Community Improvement Class offers students significant moral autonomy to judge what is important and act on it. Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture founder James Davison Hunter defines moral autonomy in The Tragedy of Moral Education in America as, “the ability to make decisions freely about what is right and wrong”—not in the sense that you choose your own right and wrong, but in that you are not coerced or “incentivized” in your judgment.

The Bartleby class offers an opportunity, with the help of a mentor, to nurture commitment to others through responsible action.

If you want your high school students to have learning opportunities like this, check out XQ and their story of the Bartleby program.

Lexington Crew builds moral character through service

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Students at South Carolina’s Meadow Glen Middle School are learning the true meaning of good character through a “Crew” program designed to connect them with the community through meaningful service projects.

The effort has not only helped to rebuild the community after devastating floods in 2015, but also to develop an ethic of service among students that will undoubtedly follow them throughout life.

James Davison Hunter, an acclaimed sociologist and founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, writes in The Tragedy of Moral Education:

No one has ever believed in kindness or honesty without understanding them in the concrete circumstances of a moral culture embedded in a moral community . . . It is easy to affirm a general idea of kindness, but quite another to believe that other people are intrinsically worth being treated kindly, and that because of that belief, one has an obligation to actually treat them kindly. The first is a much more flexible and convenient morality than the second, and it is one that is easier to ignore when the cost of holding it rises.

The perspective rings true at Meadow Glen Middle School, which opened in 2012 with a focus on building a school culture that promotes positive relationships through a Crew program that’s played a major role in student success, both academically and personally.

Students in grades six through eight meet three to five times a week in small groups to build relationships, monitor academic progress, and focus on character development, but the program has developed into something well beyond those goals.

“Our initial version of Crew recognized service and leadership as an important part of building character,” the school’s Faculty Crew wrote in a blog for Education Week. “But it took time, practice, and ultimately a natural disaster for our students to understand what the motto of Crew—We Are Crew, not passengers—really means.”

The program began with students working together with hands-on team-building exercises, followed by discussions so “students got to know the strengths and vulnerabilities of other members of their crew.

“They learned to trust each other, to fail together, and to try again,” the Faculty Crew wrote.

“The projects we took on in the first years, jointly led by Crew leaders and students, taught us a lot about organizing people, gathering resources, and working with clear purpose and coordination. We also learned how to interview experts, form partnerships in the community, and to rehearse presentations designed to persuade decision makers.”

But it was tropical storm Joaquin in October 2015—an “all-hands-on-deck moment”—that transformed the school’s culture from “service projects to an ethic of service,” according to school officials.

Many Lexington families lost most of their belongings, roads were washed out, and folks poured into local shelters and food banks.

Meadow Glen students sprang into action.

“Over the next several weeks, students helped remove damaged items from homes, participated in donation drives, worked in food shelters, organized donated goods, ripped up damaged floors and carpets, helped families move into new homes, and assisted in church efforts to get needed supplies to those in need,” faculty wrote.

One of the 8th-grade Crews also initiated a local road race to raise funds for flood victims. The students designed the race with cooperation from school and community officials, sought sponsorships from local businesses, and collaborated with classmates to promote the event.

And the event was a success for students and those in need.

“The Crew that led the initiative truly became engaged in the process and in their leadership roles. Teachers noted that the process changed how they treated their academic coursework and their behavior in the classroom,” Education Week reports.

“I listened more and cared more about schoolwork, because teachers were also invested in supporting us with the race,” said Cade, a Meadow Glen 8th-grader.

The experience also prepared students to extend their reach beyond Lexington when Hurricane Harvey flooded Texas this school year. Crews coordinated with a local transportation company to send two pallets of supplies to flood victims in Texas, though the student-led “Pack the Pallet” campaign ultimately collected enough food and supplies to send 14 pallets to the Houston Food Bank, according to the news site.

Sixth-grader Adyson described the impact the Pack the Pallet campaign had on her and her classmates.

“Seeing that we made a difference makes me want to do more service,” she said. “Service helps me be a better person and citizen (because it) brings me back to reality (and) makes me a better student in the classroom.

“You do something nice and it puts you in a good place mentally for your classes,” she said. “And, I think I treat others better and am more aware of others and bringing others into the conversation.”

The kind of self-sacrificing kindness and generosity described by Hunter seem to be on full display at Meadow Glen, and establishing those habits early will play a critical role in helping students to become more spontaneous and personal in later years.

And while the Crew program is an excellent way to instill generosity in students, resources from the Jubilee Centre and others offer ways schools can start small to build a similar sense of purpose and good character.

©2017 Advanced Studies in Culture

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