Students look out for the community
Published on November 4th, 1998
STONEHAM, MA - While High School students met with various community leaders, parents, and town committee members recently to learn more about community service opportunities in Stoneham, they inadvertently found themselves in a teaching role as well.
Members of Stoneham High School's Community Service Learning Program held a summit last Tuesday to bring together and brainstorm with various town groups in an effort to learn what opportunities and needs exist for community service in Stoneham.
Community Service Learning Program Coordinator, and high school social studies teacher, Paula Sampson described the summit as "fabulous."
Approximately 60 people, she explained, including representatives from the School Committee, Youth Commission, Community Policing, churches, the court system, community leaders, and parents, brainstormed with the students. As a result, some great ideas for community service in town were voiced.
Ideas included sponsoring a Stoneham Serve-A-Thon in the spring, which would mirror Boston's City Year Serve-A-Thon, a project that many High School students participated in recently. The program in Stoneham would be a local day of service, where community members would volunteer their time and energy to perform chores for people, such as cooking, painting, and various other odd jobs.
Other ideas involved working with different segments of the town, such as elementary school students, in a project aimed at identifying heroes.
In addition, senior citizens were considered a prime group with which to accomplish joint programs. Two such projects considered were a holiday adopt-a-family program and a letter from Santa campaign, where the groups could share resources and talents.
According to Sampson, School Committee member Jeanne Craigie advised of a program in Woburn where high school students are recognized for their accumulated service hours at graduation. This was identified as something Stoneham schools may want to consider as well.
An origami mobile for display at the High School has been started by the students with the a goal of having 1,000 names of students, who have been associated with community service, represented.
"There were some great ideas," said Sampson of the summit.
The Community Service Learning Program is a volunteer program developed at the High School approximately three years ago, and was made possible, in part, through a state grant program. In addition, a Service Learning course is also taught as part of the High School curriculum.
Throughout the year, students in the program work to connect with other groups in town that are also performing community service, such as the zoo and the hospital.
"The kids think up projects based on what they see in the community." In so doing, Sampson explained, "they increase their knowledge of how their own community works."
Last week's summit was the first opportunity to reach out to a broader community base in an attempt to coordinate community service efforts.
According to Sampson, service programs are happening all over the country and have involved tutoring, literacy programs and environmental projects in the past.
"The goal is to have half our kids involved in serving the community each year," stated Sampson of the High School group.
"They find it so exciting to work as a team," continued Sampson. She described the participants as coming from all High School grades and cliques.
The extra-curricular program has been expanded to the elementary schools and is very popular.
The group has begun investigating some of the ideas that arose from the summit and plan to be more visible in the future.
"They come away from these projects feeling they can change the world," said Sampson.
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