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COMMUNITY SERVICE

Lower School | Middle School | High School

LOWER SCHOOL
by Harriet Lieber

Community service in the lower School flows directly from a focus on community mindedness. Our very youngest students begin their experience at LREI by studying their classroom and school communities. Conversations revolve around what makes a community and how various members of the community contribute in different, but equally meaningful ways. Children explore the importance of jobs and what it means to give through doing.

Every year the Fours and EK support the Heifer Project. Last year they sold marigold and basil plants they’d raised and earned enough money to send three goats and two flocks of poultry to five families in Cambodia. The children specifically requested the animals be sent to Cambodia as one of their classmates in the Fours was born in Cambodia.

As the youngest children move up into First Grade, they hold on to their earlier
conversations but start to apply what they have learned to a larger community outside the school—our immediate neighborhood. They now start to discuss what a neighborhood community needs to be successful. How is that the same or different from the needs of our own smaller school community? (What do we see when we go for a walk? Why do we see those particular stores/businesses? What is missing? What might that mean?) This past year, each First Grade decided to become more involved in the outside community through a specific unit of study. One class created a school store, made and sold goods and then bought groceries for St. John’s food pantry. Another class wrote a newspaper about what they had learned in their community study, sold it, and donated the money they raised to the food pantry. After learning about and visiting local libraries our third First Grade class raised money through sales of a lemonade stand, to help prevent the closing of small city public libraries.

Throughout the division, throughout the year, all classes participated in the collection of food for the food pantry at St. John the Baptist Church on West 31st Street. Classes rotated the weekly collection of canned and boxed goods that were then delivered by Gabrielle Keller and her Middle School students. Last year, for the first time, the Fifth Grade participated in the food collection as well; the result of the students wanting to continue the tradition that they had begun the year before in the Lower School. Other projects Lower School students participated in throughout the year included making greeting cards for the elderly, planting and cleaning Washington Square Park, buying Rain Forest acreage, collecting money to help save the New York City zoos, and donating books, toys and clothing to organizations that work with children and their families.

The Lower School Community Service Committee published a mid-year newsletter for families to update them on the Lower School community service work, and to offer suggestions for community work outside of school. The Parent’s Association has formed a committee as well that took on a large spring project and that is geared up to take on more in the coming year.

The Lower School has worked hard to create an environment of community minded- ness and participation. Giving is almost always done in the context of larger learning and involvement. It is an evolving process that is intimately linked to our core class curricula, and is often most interesting and successful when it flows directly from the inspiration of our students.

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MIDDLE SCHOOL
by Gabrielle Keller

“Our goal is to educate students to become independent thinkers and lifelong learners and to pursue academic excellence and individual achievement, in a context of respect for others and service to the community.”

This passage opens LREI’s mission statement. Just as the academic program reflects the institution’s intellectual goals for our students, the Middle School Community Service Program guides LREI’s mandate of respect for others and service to the community. Last year’s goal was to revitalize the Middle School Community Service Program. Classroom based projects would continue, while other ongoing assignments would be created. Students would participate in these evolving projects with small groups of their schoolmates. Rather than special events, projects were organized to be an important part of the daily and yearly schedule.

The Eighth Grade kicked off the service program on the second day of school at Prospect Park, gardening and beautifying the park. A successful and popular endeavor, the new Eighth Grade will revisit this project later this month.

In the fall, the Sixth Grade sponsored the Common Cents Penny Harvest. Pennies were collected in homerooms and in the lobby for one month. Common Cents takes the money that is collected from all participating schools and awards grants to many institutions. LREI was given a grant of $500 towards the creation of a community garden. This fall, LREI students will put plants and flowers in tree pits around the trees in Little Red Square. Similarly, the Lower and Middle Schools participated in Trick or Treating for UNICEF. Together, they raised $722. A different type of service was performed when many members of the Fifth Grade wrote, directed, and acted in a play performed at LREI’s Halloween Fair.

At Thanksgiving, the entire school decorated shopping bags for God’s Love We Deliver, an organization that delivers meals to AIDS shut-ins. The students did the work in their art classes under the guidance of art teachers, Melissa Rubin and Liz Shelley. The bags were a beautiful and varied collection, combining collages, drawings, and paintings. The Middle School joined with the Fifth Grade and had a canned food drive for St. John’s Food Pantry. Coats and outerwear were also collected.

For the Winter Holidays, the Middle School made pop-up cards for the children who would be spending the holidays at the New York Foundling Hospital. The younger students worked with Melissa in art class and in their homerooms, while the older students worked with teachers who volunteered class time for this important project. The result was one hundred and forty creative and distinctive cards delivered to the Chronic Care Ward at the Foundling Hospital.

In February, D’Agostino’s food stores requested small decorated posters for their “Give a Meal, Give a Heart” program. Students worked during lunch and other free times and sent fifty cards to D’Agostino’s. Later in the month, the MS students were invited to captain a team for the Jump for Heart afternoon supporting the American Heart Association. Many children jumped for the suggested thirty minutes, and not surprisingly, the Fifth and Sixth Graders were strong leaders and organizers.

One of the more popular activities of the year is the week long Project Cicero book drive in March. Families donate gently used books to be distributed to schools in need. The Middle School collected twelve boxes of books. Four Fifth Graders also went to the Pennsylvania Hotel to sort through thousands of collected books. We hope that this year many more students will volunteer to attend this culminating event.

The Aids Walk took place on the third Sunday in May. Noni Polhill and the Seventh Grade organized the LREI team and sixty-six students and their families completed the 10K walk and had a wonderful time. This year’s team raised more than $4,000. Finally, the year ended with a last canned food drive and a new activity in which gently used athletic equipment was collected for the Stars program. Larry Kaplan, LREI’s Athletic Director welcomed the opportunity to clean out his office!

The 2003-2004 goal is to create more on-going projects. Students will continue to go to St. John’s on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons when the bags are distributed to the families. This year the St. Francis Xavier Soup Kitchen will also benefit from the Middle School Community Service Program, when students visit on Sunday mornings. Additionally, LREI has been given a children’s garden space on the corner of Bleecker Street and LaGuardia Place, and students will also be involved with some senior citizen groups.

Last year was an exciting and fulfilling year in the Middle School Service Program. The students made a significant impact on those communities that they were serving. It is clear that those communities had an impact on the students as well.

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High School
by Nicholas O’Han

Community service reached new levels of participation, commitment and achievement at the High School last year. The emphasis was on service learning and two new programs produced remarkable results. The first was LREI’s partnership with New York Cares — a distinguished volunteer service organization working with high school students for the first time. The second was LREI Student Action for Children — a unique student-run foundation that researched and made grants of financial assistance to volunteer service agencies working on children’s issues throughout New York.

New York Cares is the founding branch of City Cares, which currently operates in two dozen or more cities around the country and the world. City Cares mobilizes adults, some of whom volunteer individually and others through their employer, to perform volunteer service in their hometown. They also sponsor a number of daylong activities for students and LREI High School students had participated over the years. During the past year, the organization began considering working with students on a more regular basis, and were so impressed with LREI students that over the summer of 2002 we worked together on a new “Service Learning” curriculum to be piloted by LREI and two other New York City schools.

Service Learning is a well-established concept among educators in colleges around the country. It recognizes the important benefits — both to communities and to students — of volunteer service, but it adds an essential second level, that of in-depth education designed to enable students to understand the roots of the issues they are addressing. The program placed a New York Cares staff member at our school to work with teachers who volunteered to supervise specific projects. Each student participated in at least two intensive “service learning” projects during the year. Each project included an educational piece in which students examined a particular area of social need. These included HIV-AIDS, literacy, after-school care, community arts programs and homelessness. There was extensive reading, pre- and post event discussion groups, and a reflection piece after each experience. Student leaders for each project participated in Peer Leadership planning twice during the year and took responsibility for all the planning and executive functioning that went into each outing.

Many students formed affiliations with particular organizations as a result of their work within the program. Some of the organizations students worked with this year were The Momentum AIDS Project, The Afterschool Program at the Dunleavy Milbank Center, The Frederick Douglass Center Literacy Project, and the Bialystoker Home for the Aged in Chinatown. The students absolutely loved the New York Cares Partnership. The spirit of community service at the High School was never so genuine and widespread. In post event meetings and assemblies students spoke thoughtfully about the social needs that required the work of volunteer agencies.

As in the case of the New York Cares Partnership, the underlying theme of the new Community Service Roundtable is service learning. Like the New York Cares Partnership, LREI Student Action for Children builds on LREI’s long tradition of citizenship education, service learning and involvement with issues of economic and social justice. High School students learned how to make a difference by researching and visiting service organizations throughout the City, and learning how such organizations provide services and support to children who are under served and perhaps at risk in today’s environment of growing need and shrinking government services. Members of the foundation learn how volunteer service agencies operate and charitable and philanthropic foundations do their work. Participation in the foundation provides students with the knowledge and perspective required to understand the background, underlying causes and context of contemporary social conditions. Student trustees applied to be members of the board on the basis of their prior record of achievement in the School’s Community Service Program.

The Community Service Roundtable originated with the support of the Norcross Wildlife Foundation, which provided a $10,000 grant to support the student foundation’s grant making activities. According to the mission statement that the students wrote themselves, LREI Student Action for Children seeks out and supports the work of volunteer service agencies that help children by addressing their developmental, physical, educational and social needs. The student trustees studied the way philanthropic foundations assess the eligibility of service organizations seeking support for their work. They designed an application, assessing the applicant organization’s mission, legal status, staffing and references. They visited sites and observed the organization’s work in progress. Individual trustees discussed with the executive staff of each applicant organization the project for which they were seeking financial assistance.

Ultimately, seven grants were awarded to a variety of programs in such areas as dance, art, literacy, art therapy, mentoring, leadership, foster children and after school activities. Receiving grants were: Ifatayo Cultural Arts Facility — mentors and provides leadership for “at-risk” youth of African descent and their families; Say it Loud — an afterschool program supported by the Urban League that encourages literacy through writing and poetry; Fresh Youth Initiatives — supports and encourages the efforts of young people in Washington Heights to develop leadership skills, design and carry out community service projects, and encourages teens to advocate and take action to improve their community; Foster Pride — provides art therapy and mentoring to foster children in New York City; The Albert G. Oliver Program – an education and leadership program that enhances the opportunities of academically gifted African-American and Latino Students; Make a Better Place – an art and youth development program encouraging young people to identify their concerns, communicate their ideas and help shape a better future for their communities in which they live; and Go-Saint Lukes — an educational tutorial program for underachieving New York City students.

The Student Trustees of LREI Student Action for Children last year were Ninth Grader Michelle Herrara, Tenth Graders Jessie Lopez and Stefan Holt, Eleventh Graders Maeve D’Arcy, Julia Burlingham, Brian Marmolejos, Shoyinka McKen and Isabelle Philippe, and Seniors Dana Peterson, Angela Lowe, and Casey Starr, who was the Chair of the Student Board.

The Parents’ Advisory Board includes Carol Hagen-Holt, Kathleen D’Arcy and Sheran Theodoro. Nick O’Han has worked with the group since its inception. It is a remarkable program. As one member of the Roundtable claimed, “There is no use complaining unless we are planning on changing something. I have not given up on the world, although sometimes it is discouraging. Student Action for Children is one way I can make a difference.” The grant even inspired one student to create her own service initiative after assisting in a Lower East Side art program that did not have enough supplies to go around. “How can children make art with only one color?” she asked. Inspired, she formed Tools for Art, a student non-profit group that will distribute quality art supplies to children in homeless shelters.

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