January 22 , 2007VOL. 45, NO. 2Oakland, CA

Service learning expands
in elementary school classrooms

Students at St. Elizabeth Elementary School visit their local fire station to deliver toys they collected for the Oakland Fire Dept.’s annual Christmas toy drive. ST. ELIZABETH SCHOOL PHOTO

Junior high students at Holy Rosary School in Antioch stand with two U.S. military personnel after giving 1,000 beanie babies to the Blue Star Moms of Vacaville. The Moms will send the collection to Iraq for distribution by U.S. service men and women to Iraqi children. FELY FAJARDO PHOTO

Sixth graders at St. Mary School in Walnut Creek show their enthusiasm for a car wash they organized to benefit the Stephanie Frazier Foundation – Network of Care which delivers snack bags to parents of children in pediatric and trauma hospital units. In just three hours, the students raised $825, enough money for more than 400 snack bags. ST. MARY SCHOOL PHOTO

By Carrie McClish
Staff writer

Since the start of the school year, students at Oakland’s St. Elizabeth Elementary School have been busy stewards. First, they participated in a toiletry drive for a women’s shelter. That was followed by a Thanksgiving canned food drive. But it was the recent toy drive for Christmas that still has the campus buzzing with excitement.

Brianne Walterhouse, fourth grade teacher and coordinator of the school’s service learning program, was expecting about 100 toys for the Oakland Fire Dept.’s drive. But the students donated 300, enough to fill 65 large garbage bags. The students delivered the toys to a firehouse three blocks away and the firefighters were impressed. “It is still the talk at the firehouse – seriously, 300 toys,” Walterhouse said.

And it is still the talk of the campus. “It’s good to help our community and the poor,” said Gabriela, a second grader. “They didn’t have anything for Christmas. It’s good that we have toys for homeless kids and babies out there.”

Victor G., a fourth grader, echoed her sentiments. “I thought the toy drive was helpful for all the kids that never get toys for Christmas,” he said. “It taught me that giving is good and that more people should start sharing what they have.”

“I learned how to actually appreciate the toys I take for granted. I hope we will have it in the future,” said Angelina, a member of the 7th grade class.

The toy drive, once described as a form of community service, is now an example of the school’s new service learning program in which students work together on a project and then reflect on what they learned and what it means, Walterhouse said.

The toy drive was tied to three areas of the school’s curriculum – social studies, religion and language arts. The students are currently completing a writing project based on the project.

The program was not about having the students collect cans or a toy and then send the donations off to a charity, said the fourth grade teacher. Rather students learn why they are donating the toys and who the toys are going to, and what effect the toys will have on the lives of the kids who receive them. The firefighters who worked with the school helped provide a bigger picture for students by showing them photos of the children who would be receiving the toys.

“That is a very valuable lesson, especially for the older students,” Walterhouse said. “When they get to junior high, students can get kind of a selfish attitude but with this campaign the junior high students brought in more toys than most classes. So I am glad to see that it really did affect them.”

Long familiar to Catholic high schools, service learning programs are taking root in elementary schools across the Oakland Diocese. These programs take learning outside the textbooks by turning what students read and learn into action. Often these lessons reflect Catholic social teaching.

At St. Patrick School in Rodeo, students reached out literally across thousands of miles to help the homeless in Detroit.

As part of their Cold Hands, Warm Heart Project the students collected and purchased over 500 pairs of new gloves and sent them to the Archdiocese of Detroit for distribution to the homeless in their neighborhoods.

Spearheaded by the student government and the school’s development director, the students had organized a similar glove donation campaign for a homeless charity in Richmond, said Kelly Stevens, principal at St. Patrick.

Students included a personal message with their donations. Inside each pair of gloves they placed a small heart that read, “St. Pat cares.”

In a letter sent to the school from the archdiocese, students learned that the gloves had been sent to two parishes that operate “warming centers” and care for homeless families. The gloves arrived in time for the Thanksgiving holiday.

“The number of homeless is growing rapidly since so many companies in the metropolitan Detroit area are laying off workers,” wrote Mercy Sister Mary Gehringer, archdiocesan superintendent of schools.

“Both centers are dependent on donations, so your gloves are a welcome gift,” she said.

In addition to the letter Sister, Gehringer sent the school a copy of the archdiocesan newspaper with an article about the Rodeo school’s project.
Jessica Lacayo, an 8th grader at St. Patrick, said that participating in the project showed students that they have the ability to help others “even if it is a dollar here and a dollar there.” That is a good feeling, she added.

Service learning projects take place in every class at St. Patrick, said Stevens, noting that first graders contributed their talents to the community by decorating squares for quilts that were sewed together by adults and donated to a hospice care center.

After an overview in class, the fifth grade class learned about immigrants by visiting residents of a local retirement facility.

The encounter led to a “wonderful dialog and discussion” that helped to extend their learning, Stevens said.

Meeting with the senior citizens and hearing their stories about where they came from and how they came to the U.S. left a lasting impression on the fifth graders. For Dominic Weir, the encounter was surprising.

“I thought this was not going to be very exciting – talking to old people – but I learned so much about where they were born and where they grew up. It was so interesting!”

What makes service learning special is that it helps to “deepen the faith of students,” Stevens added. “It helps to deepen the student’s sense of what it means to be Catholic."

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