Learn and Serve Projects
Baxter County
Mountain Home High School
Contact Person: Susan Bergman
Phone: (870)425-1215
A group of 24 MHHS honors students decided last year to begin a school-wide recycling program. They met briefly in the summer with two interested faculty members and then in September 2004 began meeting each Tuesday after school with two sponsors.
Once they were awarded the Service Learning grant, plans began in earnest. They teamed with the self-contained class under the supervision of Mrs. Nora Regan. In November, ten CSI students and twenty honors students became the recycling team and toured the local landfill and recycling center for our area.
The last two months have been very productive. We have petitioned Keep Arkansas Beautiful to be a community partner. Also, the CSI students have a bus and have begun picking up the paper waste from three of our seven campuses. They began shredding the confidential paperwork and added that to our recycling. They transport the recycled paper to the Baxter Day Service Center. Approximately 2600 pounds has been recycled to date. Mrs. Regan is also on the Center board of directors and is completely devoted to sustaining this program as it is direct job training for her students.
Now the group is planning a full school assembly to teach about recycling. They are purchasing appropriate paper and plastic recycling bins. The assembly is scheduled for January 16 at the high school. Then they intend to take the presentation to our junior high and middle school. After the assemblies at each school, the bins will be place on campus, students and staff will place paper and plastic in bins, the collection process now in place will be expanded.
The goal is to have all of our K-12 campuses involved in paper/plastic recycling by the end of the year. Then, we hope to explore using appropriate food waste in composting and gardening.
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Benton County
Gentry High School
Contact Person: Tanya Patterson
Phone: (479)736-2667
The Learn and Serve Project in Gentry High School is carried out by students in the Multicultural Club. The Club is open to all students who want to participate. The project targets the need of our growing, multicultural community. The overall goal and projected impact of this project is to actively involve families from different cultures in the community, help families feel welcomed, and provide needed information to these families. The cultural gaps will be identified and reduced.
Students are completing projects which include the following: creating community guidebooks, reading multicultural books to preschool aged children, creating and presenting cultural presentations, tutoring adults learning English, acting as translators/interpreters, beginning intramural soccer events, and participating in training to create a school and community environments which are welcoming. These projects are completed over the course of the school year. Students are building relationships and partnerships with many community agencies to help make their project successful. Students reflect throughout the project to achieve meaningful learning and participation.
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Cleburne County
Quitman Elementary School
Contact Person: Kelly Allen
Phone: (501)589-3485
Reading at Renegar's"--7th and 8th grade students will read and visit with the elderly residents of Renegar Apartments twice per month. The student will also record stories told to them by the residents. These stories will be kept in journals by the students, photos will be added and a book will be published at the end of the year and presented to each Renegar Resident at the Recognition Banquet.
"Parent/Student Reading Night"--Parent and students in grades K-8th will read together and students will teach their parents who to take a quiz on the computer, this will increase both parent and students reading skills.
"Story Hour"--Community members read to Preschool-2nd grade students once per month. After the story the children do crafts or play games.
"Community Closet"--clothes, shoes, and school supplies are available to students, parents and community members year round.
Students in grades K-12 hold a yearly food drive and humane society drive. the students also collect and count items for the school wide recycling program.
Students will help write and take photos for the local newspaper and the school's newsletter.
Students and Master Gardeners--The Master Gardeners will help the students plant flowers, bushes and trees and will teach them how to care for them, this will be an ongoing project.
Local Police and Fire Department will visit and talk to students about safety and career awareness. A mock drinking and driving accident will be planned using local police, fire, ambulance, air rescue and other community members for all 9th-12th grade students.
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Craighead County
Valley View Elementary
Contact Person: June Horne
Phone: (870)935-1910
The Believe and Achieve After School Tutoring/Mentoring Project will provide service opportunities for junior high and high school students in an after school tutoring/mentoring program for elementary at-risk students two days per week. Student volunteers will be matched up with K-3 children to develop personal relationships as they tutor and mentor them. Regular classroom teachers will prescribe daily activities and the project will be directed and supervised by two certified teachers.
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Crawford County
Central Middle School
Contact Person: Lisa Mayfield
Phone: (479)474-7059
Central Middle School 5th and 6th grade students will be teaming up with 4th grade students from Tate Elementary School to interview veterans and veteran’s spouses of past wars. We will have 12 teams consisting of three students per team. We are encouraging our students to not only delve into the history of our citizen’s of Van Buren, but to help our nation preserve the stories and lives of our local veterans. While conducting video interviews, students will be working on enhancing skills in writing, history, oral communications, and technology. Each student will be keeping a reflective notebook of interviews and team meetings. Each team will be responsible for a video interview and a PowerPoint presentation. All videos will be sent to the Library of Congress in Washington D. C., as well as our school and public libraries. We will close the project with a Celebration banquet in order to celebrate the lives and service of our veterans and their spouses. The students will present each veteran with a plaque, and a DVD of their interview. Each team will also share a PowerPoint presentation in which they have created.
JJ Izard Elementary School
Contact Person: Mary McCutchen
Phone: (479)471-3150
Students will learn about pet care from research and interviews with veterinarians. Students will prepare a “How to Care for your Pet” booklet to be distributed to other students. Students will also volunteer at the local Humane Society.
Students will research the vegetables best suited to grow on school property. Students will learn how to develop a garden from planning the location, tilling the garden, planting, caring for, and then harvesting the vegetables. Upon harvesting, the food will be donated to the Frank Turner Gospel Rescue Mission and the local food bank.
Students will plan Saturday lunches, prepare them, and deliver to adult workers at Habitat for Humanity building sites.
Students will choose a product to market during lunch and recess and will use profits to sponsor a child in the Make A Wish Foundation.
Students will work with the Master Gardeners Club and the County Extension Office to plan, plant, and care for a garden on school grounds. Upon harvesting, the food will be donated to the Frank Turner Gospel Rescue Mission and the local food bank.
Students will participate in learning activities concerning the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his contributions to society. Students and parents will hold a coat and story book drive on this day, whereby community members can drop of used coats and books that will be donated to the local homeless shelter and the Salvation Army.
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Desha County
Arkansas City Elementary
Contact Person: La Warn Rodgers
Phone: (870)644-3800
Arkansas City Public School District will develop and implement the Learn and Serve Project for the 2004-05 school year to provide fire safety and fire protection information. The students will distribute fire detectors to homes that are in need. The fire safety project will teach students and the community about fires and help them develop a plan. Students will provide fire safety information and presentations throughout the school. Also this year, students will participate in the Veteran’s History project.
The planned projects will be based on Arkansas curriculum frameworks. Students will also build communication and leadership skills while learning the value of community service. Throughout service, students will record their experiences and provide written and oral reflections of these experiences.
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Faulkner County
Vilonia Middle School
Contact Person: Cathy Riggins
Phone: (501)796-2940
Through the Learn and Serve Grant, Vilonia Middle School students will implement programs with a primary focus on history and daily life in the community. Students will research the history of their community and present day information. A community booklet will be produced and presented to the city chamber as an information
book of Vilonia. Other program activities will focus on cross-age experiences that include an introduction to the educational profession service-learning elective class, out of school activities, and a mentoring/tutoring program. All activities are designed to
meet the goals of the America's Promise and Arkansas State Standards as students target the following areas: (1) literacy, (2) environmental awareness, (3) technology in the classroom, (4) community interaction, and (5) student achievement on the Arkansas Benchmark Test.
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Pulaski County
Little Rock Central High School
Contact Person: Kirby Shofner
Phone: (501)447-1563
The project in question is designed to gain the attention of a younger group of people and encourage them to recycle basic materials that are used everyday. By doing this, the school is able to maintain a cleaner campus as well as surrounding neighborhood. Students will learn that their efforts are not only help them and their classmates, but also the community, city, and state. Students will also learn responsibility of their actions by placing their recyclable products in the correct bin, and by helping collect the materials to be recycled. By starting a recycling program, not only are the students learning, but the human needs, environment and public safety is being improved by the fact that the materials are being reused and not buried in a land fill.
This project is planned to be started as a “grass-roots” program. That is, every year the freshman class will receive a “pre-test” on their recycling knowledge. As the year progresses recycling facts will be introduced to the students each week. At the end of the year, the students will take the “post-test” in order to measure the knowledge the students have of recycling. After four years, all four grade levels at the school will be introduced and well educated on the process of recycle at our school and at their homes, and the benefits of recycling.
The money obtained from the grant has been set aside in order to purchase the supplies needed or suggested for the best collection of recycle products. Large, weather-proof, bins will be purchased to collect the plastic bottles in the lunch area and hallways. Recycled cardboard boxes will also be purchased to collect paper products in the class rooms and offices throughout the school.
Woodruff Elementary
Contact Person: Janice Wilson
Phone: (501)447-7302
The Woodruff Elementary School Project will seek to incorporate elementary students, the Capital View Stiff Station Neighborhood Association Community, Partners in Education, BIGS (Big Brothers/Big Sisters mentors) and members of the Woodruff 21st Century Community Learning Center participants (which includes students to 8th grade) in a collaborative endeavor to refurbish the school playground into a community “Peaceable Place” mediation garden, physical activity course, and nature sanctuary.
The establishment of a park on school grounds will provide a safe haven for the community’s children to play and visit with their parents, grandparents, or guardians.
Using a professional garden blueprint designed by Chris Olsen, owner of Horticare Nursery Garden & Design Center, students in 1st – 8th grade (middle school students are former Woodruff students who live in the neighborhood) under the direction of teachers, community volunteers/senior citizens and Partners in Education members will construct an arbor, benches, tables, and a Labyrinth path. The Labyrinth path will be used as form of exercise and mediation. The school counselor will utilize the space as an outdoor classroom to counsel with children who may be upset and need serene surroundings to calm them, conflict resolution lessons, and by classroom teachers as hands on classroom in science, literacy, and math. A Peace Path, steps to resolving conflict that includes directions and ground rules such as “use ‘I’ messages”, “agree on a solution” and “exit in Peace” will also be painted on the sidewalk leading to the playground equipment.
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St. Francis County
Forrest City High School
Contact Person: Johnetta Crumbly
Phone: (870)633-1464
With the help of volunteer peer literacy and math tutors, working with a certified English and math teacher, we are assisting challenged students with their English and math homework and college-minded students with ACT preparation. Teachers, tutors and students work for one hour a day for four days a week, Monday through Thursday.
The peer tutors and teachers work with students to help them with problems they might have to complete assignments given by the regular class room teachers.
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Van Buren County
Shirley Alternative Learning Center
Contact Person: Vicki Sandage
Phone: (501)723-4907
Shirley Schools’ service learning program began in 1997 and has evolved into projects that fall into three major categories. First, high school and junior high students who are a part of the Shirley Alternative Learning Center develop curricular materials in life skills, character principles, teacher resources for elementary grade use. Many of these materials are multimedia presentations using voice, music, text, illustrations, and animations that are mostly delivered on CD and using PowerPoint. Presentations will be made available to other school districts through the service learning web page.
The second project category includes maintenance of five ornamental garden plots, some of which memorialize teachers and students who have been lost to us within recent years. Central to sustaining our gardens is the completion of a greenhouse that will be used to provide plants for all planting areas. The Van Buren County Master Gardeners work directly with our students to help plan, plant, and maintain the garden projects.
Our third category of service learning activity is carrying out workshops that train students from upper elementary through high school levels in the process of identifying areas of need that can be addressed through service learning projects and developing plans for implementing and evaluating responses. The students have identified initiatives that include starting a recycling program, maintaining a food closet, supporting a SADD chapter, creating a decorative garden for city hall, developing a weight/ workout area, improving the elementary playground area, offering a puppet program to the daycare children, and identifying “odds and ends” such as a new flag needed by our district.
In general, activities in all of the project areas are tied to classroom skills and emphasis is placed on finding and using resource people within the community. The most important goal form our service learning programming is helping students to develop the skills necessary to identifying problems, develop effective responses, and work together to implement plans while serving their school and community.
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Washington County
Fayetteville High School
Contact Person: Nancy Smith
Phone: (479)444-3050
Service Learning at Fayetteville High School utilizes several venues. The first is service credit through Act 648 for students who volunteer on their own time. The availability has been introduced to students, but we haven’t had any completers yet. Initiation and expansion of Act 648 participants will be one focus.
Another source of service learning for students is through the service learning class itself. In this literacy-based semester class, students complete all components of the service learning model, as well as reading and writing about service. Some projects involve the entire class, and some involve smaller groups of students. Two projects in which the entire class participates are on-campus recycling and visiting veterans weekly at the VA Hospital.
Small group/individual projects include assisting at Children’s House (a center for abused children), LifeSource (a food pantry for the needy), visiting patients at City Hospital (geriatric center), serving lunch at the Senior Citizens Center, tutoring special needs students at area schools, grounds keeping at the Ozark Botanical Society Gardens, serving as pages for poll supervisors on election night, and performing in a Veterans’ Celebration at Butterfield Trail Village.
The service learning class also volunteers on campus. Students may tutor ESL students, act as media center aides, assist community volunteers in our district’s Homeless program closet, partner with the PTO in campus beautification, and offer assistance in our district’s administrative office.
The final outlet for service learning in this program is through an oral communication class. In this class, students learn interviewing techniques, teach them to junior high students, and practice them by interviewing veterans in conjunction with the Veteran’s History Project.
Goals for all aspects of the program for the coming year include improvement and expansion of the existing program.
Woodland Jr. High School
Contact Person: Connie Crisp
Phone: (479)444-3067
Woodland has 75 students in 3 service learning classes plus 20-30 students who help with projects but were unable to be in the class. Students go to two different agencies every week. These agencies include West Campus Nursery, a day care for children of teenage moms; Richardson Center, a daycare for mentally and physically handicapped preschoolers; Children's House, a preschool for abused children; Root, Washington, New School and Jefferson Elementary Schools, tutoring; Seven Hills Homeless Shelter and LifeSource, a Christian based agency for homeless and low income; City Hospital and VA Hospital; Fayetteville Senior Citizen Center; Hillcrest Towers, housing for low income elderly; Peace at Home Thrift store and shelter, agency for domestic abuse; and two Headstart programs.
Students also do a minimum of 6 hours of service outside of class each 9 weeks. Students also do needs assessment throughout the community and create their own projects. Several groups of students have applied for grants with the Disney Foundation to fund the community projects which include landscaping a portion of the Senior Citizen Center, landscaping Leverett Elementary School, Clean up at the Confederate Cemetery, Preparing lunch and providing supplies to the homeless shelter, etc. Students in two classes wrote to soldiers in Iraq and sent boxes of food and necessities to the soldiers. A group of students planned a car wash on a Saturday and gave the proceeds to LifeSource. 45 students took a bus at 7:30 am on a Saturday and helped with National Park Cleanup America.
The Service Learning Program was recognized by the state as Program of the Year. The SL Program was also recognized by the Fayetteville District School Board. Teachers form Woodland, Fayetteville High School, and University of Arkansas will present The Evolution of a Service Learning Program at the SL National Conference in California.
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