CSEE Community Service Awards

2008

The Community Service Award for 2008, entitled "Connecting the Ages", recognized schools doing exemplary work connecting older students with younger ones, or connecting students with the elderly.

Recognition

1st Place:
Louise S. McGehee Middle School, New Orleans, LA

2nd Place: ‘
Iolani School, Honolulu, HI

Program Descriptions

Louise S. McGehee Middle School
Head of School: Eileen Powers
Coordinator of Service Learning: Carla Robertson

Louise S. McGehee School’s application was considered outstanding for a number of reasons. The New Orleans school not only makes age connections, but program is also exemplary of service learning at its best, for it is incorporated seamlessly into the school’s curriculum.

McGehee’s schedule allows time for planning and reflection, and the service learning components themselves relate to coursework in the students’ classes.

Sixth graders at Louise S. McGehee all participate in a program called Celebration Literacy: Rebuilding through Reading. They meet monthly with their “reading buddies,” alternating meetings between their school and the partner school.

Each partner visit involves a series of literacy-related activities, engaging partner pairs in reading, writing, and art. A number of field trips also take place, with a focus on poetry reading and writing, attending plays, making bookmarks, and cooperative writing activities, among others.

The seventh grade program, called BRIDGES (Because Reuniting Intensely Different Generations Enlivens Spirits), is now in its ninth year. The “bridges” are between students and the elderly residents at St. Anna’s, who participate with students in craft activities, sing alongs, and oral history projects. Students do all the work choosing activities and events. Meanwhile, the seventh graders are learning about bones and muscles in science class, and researching conditions like osteoporosis and arthritis.

Because the bridges built are yearlong connections (visits are at least three times per month), the school reports the development of rich relationships between students and residents.

The service-learning partnership in eighth grade is called Science Connections, through which students partner with fourth graders at a neighboring public school. Eighth graders teach their younger counterparts about the Mississippi River, about local ecosystems, food chains, animal adaptations and predator-prey relationships. Student families work together to create educational “field guides” to local ecosystems; these guides include research, photographs, artwork and poetry.

We congratulate the students and staff at Louise S. McGehee. The frequency of contact and breadth of experiences their service learning program offers at this middle school level makes it a model in a host of different ways. As McGehee Middle School Head Connie Hartlan told us, their program “touches many lives outside of our school, while positively encouraging those within our school. From 7-year olds to 77-year olds, we feel that this program is impacting our community in ways beyond our imagination.”

We agree, and we thank you.

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‘Iolani School
Head of School: Dr. Val Iwashita
Coordinator of Service Learning: JoAnn Stepien

‘Iolani School has second-grade students involved in one of the most creative—and perhaps one of the most important—projects we have seen in recent years.

Veterans of the Second World War are now in their eighties and nineties. As the years pass, fewer and fewer of them remain with us. Students at ‘Iolani have learned to respect the contributions of those veterans, and simultaneously to learn more about history, government, war time, and the contributions of veterans.

Their project forms part of a social studies unit called “Celebrating Our Heritage.” After practicing with a World War II military intelligence officer who visits their classroom, the students prepare interview questions and later meet with veterans from the 100th Infantry Battalion at the veterans club in Honolulu.

Interviews with these veterans are taped and notes are taken. Students use their note taking, sequencing, and story writing skills. The information gathered is later used to create a multimedia program, Honoring our Veterans. Lunch is eaten, and both students and vets write greetings to current soldiers serving abroad.

An extension to the service learning project—and study about the government—takes place as the students participate in the project to encourage development of a US postage stamp to honor Japanese American World War II soldiers, “The Nisei.” These men “served with outstanding valor despite war hysteria and racism.”