Episcopal CSL 2014-2015 year in review pub

2014-2015 Year in Review

PreK-3 through Grade 12College Preparatory

Nondiscriminatory AdmissionsTuition Assistance Program

www.ehsbr.org

Center for Service

Learning

EPISCOPAL

his is the third year for the Center for Service Learning at Episcopal and we are seeing the seeds that were

planted in the first few years, beginning to bear fruit. We have been encouraging students to really think about what kind of service inspires them and then let us help them find ways to learn more about that work and make it become a reality.

We have had so many students “pitching” ideas about different service learning opportunities that they would like to organize, not only for themselves, but for their classmates as well. There have been students working with clubs to raise money and awareness for Autism Speaks, upper school student athletes working to create self-esteem in young women with Girls On the Run, global service work in Africa and other parts of the world as well as the work that we do here in Baton Rouge.

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2 CSL Publication 2014-2015

Service that Inspires...

The 2014-2015 edition of our CSL publication will highlight much of what we have done here including the work in the Lower School with City Year and Melrose Elementary School through Chaplain Charlie DeGravelle’s Religion class, the Middle School Latin class collaboration between Nathalie Roy’s students and an Episcopal graduate, Mr. Jeff Moore, who teaches at Gardere Community Christian School. You will also read about what has been happening in the Upper Schoolfrom the student’s perspective.

The students have started to take the lead in this part of our educational program—from the 9th Grade Retreat based around service learning, to our two partnership programs this semester, Food and Hunger in the City and the THRIVE tutoring program—it has really become about student leadership.

The Rev. Kirkland “Skully” KnightSenior Chaplain and Associate Head of School for Service Learning

CSL 3 CSL 3

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ifth grade religion begins by exploring the Biblical foundations for serving others, studying Old and New

Testament teachings about helping those in need. Next, we study the basic elements of a community and, in particular, how communities respond to the the most in need. Each student chooses, researches and presents a major project about an area of service that corresponds to his or her personal interests, skills and talents. The study includes making contact with a local organization which serves in the student’s chosen area of interest. Finally, the class chooses one service organization to work with as a class. First-quarter fifth graders chose to help our “sister” school, Melrose Elementary, a public school in a low-income, high-crime area,

by delivering books, meeting and visiting with Melrose students, and by joining with City Year volunteers and Melrose students to refurbish their school garden.

Second-quarter students visited Friends of the Animals, a shelter and adoption center for abandoned dogs. They were able to exercise and play with the dogs as well as to learn how a dog-adoption agency works. The semester was capped by a visit from United Way employees who taught us how this important organization helps our community prioritize and fund its many member service organizations.

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by Deacon Charles deGravelles

Lower School Work Day at Melrose

hree years ago Episcopal’s Latin students and teacher, Mrs. Nathalie Roy, helped to start up a Latin program

at a new school aimed at serving underprivileged kids in the Gardere area – for the first few years, classes met in the basement of a church in downtown Baton Rouge. Their Latin teacher was a volunteer who visited twice weekly. That school, the Gardere Community Christian School, now has its own small campus and a full-time Latin teacher, Mr. Jeff Moore. As God’s grace, and maybe a little luck, would have it, Mr. Moore, an Episcopal alum, is a former student of Mrs. Roy’s.

Through the years, they stayed in touch, and this past semester, they have been working on ways to assist the Gardere Latin students through the CSL. Mrs. Roy’s 8th grade advisory class decided they wanted to raise money for the Gardere CCS Latin program with a bake sale. They shared their plan with a presentation during a Middle School morning meeting assembly. They set their goal at $150 so that they could donate a site license for a Latin computer program which reinforces grammatical concepts and vocabulary with fun interactive games, a nice complement to the Gardere students’ textbook. As

it happens, Mrs. Roy’s students were familiar with this textbook since they had used it earlier. The bake sale was a smashing success, earning more than double the goal the class had set.

Mrs. Roy’s advisory class took a field trip to visit Mr. Moore’s class so they could present the money they raised and share some Latin grammar and vocabulary games from the software they will be purchasing with the donated money. Before the visit, the students had prepared a Kahoot quiz based on the Latin chapter the Gardere students were working on. During the visit, EHS students, with their iPads in hand, paired up with Gardere students to play the fast-paced, competitive game. Then, they demonstrated some vocabulary practice games and noun declension sorting activities.

Last, the EHS students handed over a check in the amount of the money they raised. After some quick goodbyes, Mr. Moore’s students bombarded Mrs. Roy with questions about him as a student back in the day. The most popular question – “How old is Mr. Moore?” The Gardere students plan a visit to EHS to continue the school’s partnership. We can’t wait to see them again!

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Latin at Gardere Community Christian School

middle school

by Nathalie Roy

St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital

Cystic Fibrosis Foundation

Cerebral Palsy International

Research Foundation

Companion Animal Alliance

Warriors For Freedom

Support Our War Heroes

MD Anderson

Cleveland Clinic

The Miracle League

Juvenile Diabetes Research

Foundation We are so proud of our Class of 2021 and their fundraising/servicelearning efforts!

CSL 5

n Friday, May 1st, the 6th grade class participated in Lemonade Day Louisiana which is part of the National

Lemonade Day. This was all started by Houston entrepreneur and philanthropist Michael Holthouse. He and his wife Lisa wanted to help kids understand entrepreneurship and philanthropy. This was a great service learning tool for our 6th graders who became familiar with what it means to start a business, and how to do non-profit fundraising. To prepare for this day, in advisory groups over the course of the spring semester, the 6th graders:1) Designed a stand2) Chose an organization(s) to support3) Researched their organization(s) of choice and presented to the Lower School, Middle School and High School about their cause(s)4) Created lemonade recipes5) Created flyers to promote their lemonade stands On May 1st, the 6th graders set up their stands, mixed roughly 50-60 gallons of lemonade to sell to the Episcopal community, and prepared to sell lemonade. The students got creative with their selling tactics, from decorations hung from the trees,

benefitting

sixth grade lemonade day

O music playing through their iPads to wearing sombreros and mustaches.

All the hard work paid off and the 84 sixth graders managed to raise $2,140.25 in sales and donations!

by Nancy Callaway

he Episcopal seventh grade class participated in a service learning project for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

in Memphis. They were inspired by

classmate Larkin Dorris, who has been a patient at St. Jude for 5 years. Larkin educated her classmates on

what life is like for a child with cancer. She described her experiences at St. Jude and explained how important the hospital, its doctors, and its staff have been in her life, and how they

help many children with cancer. In class, the 7th graders learned about the science of cancer cells and cell division, the history of St. Jude, the

seventh grade St. Jude children’s research hospital

eighth grade salt water intrusion

mathematics of a fundraiser, and the process of writing thank you notes for the many donations they received. To raise funds, they solicited donations for participating in a walkathon

around the Coach Dupe Trail. On the 7th grade trip to Memphis, the class visited St. Jude and presented a check for $26,221.01!

$26,221.01


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hile studying the Great Lakes as a fresh water treasure, we learned that less than 2% of the Earth's

water is suitable for drinking.

We felt secure in our ability to access fresh water because Baton Rouge has some of the best water in the U.S. Yes, we were quite pleased with ourselves until we learned about salt water intrusion into our wonderful water. This salt water is being pulled through the Baton Rouge fault line because of increased use of water in homes.

By using the problem solving process developed by Dr. E. Paul Torrence,

the students decided that as 8th graders they could spread the word of the salt water threat to our drinking water by informing their fellow middle school students. They did this via class visits and a Power Point presentation on the threat of salt water and suggestions on how to use less water.

W by Julie Weaver

by Kathleen DaQuanno

ninth grade service learning retreat

4community groups benefitted

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or the past few years the Center for Service Learning has taken on the challenge of providing the service learning

opportunities for the 9th grade. It can be a time of great adjustment for our new freshmen and so rather than having them fulfill the same service learning requirement as the 10th, 11th and 12th graders, we decided to have their service learning opportunities become part of their school year. That starts with their retreat.

There were 5 different groups of freshmen. One group went to Melrose Elementary School, one group went to the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank, one group went to the Louisiana School for the Visually Impaired and two groups went to BREC’s Greenwood Community Park. The groups did service projects at each location and learned more about what actually happens there and how their work makes an impact on that place and the larger community.

F In the afternoon, all of the groups went to Greenwood Park for lunch and games and time together as a class. The leadership of the class, students and faculty, worked together to make the retreat a great way to start the year.

Melrose Elementary School

Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank

Louisiana School for the Visually Impaired

BREC’s Greenwood Community Park

by The Rev. Skully Knight

n October of this year, five students traveled to Concepcion, Chile’ to participate in the National Chilean Science Fair

held at Universidad del Bio Bio. The trip was also the first in a future exchange between the high school Colegio Concepcion San Pedro and Episcopal.

During the exchange visit, students were able to take part in a service project that was originally brought to their high school by Pam Blanchard and Ed Bush of Louisiana State University. The program, Coastal Roots, is a widespread program in K-12 institutions in south Louisiana where students grow, nurture, and eventually plant the seedlings in order to restore coastal wetlands. Episcopal has participated in this program for the

last three years.

While in Chile’, our Episcopal students participated in a planting trip with students and a scouting troop from Colegio Concepcion San Pedro. Chile’s coastline, despite different causative land-loss factors than south Louisiana, experiences coastal land loss. Their land loss is primarily due to earthquakes and consequent erosion. A group of approximately 20 students came on an exchange visit to Louisiana in January. While here, they traveled to the Bonnet Carre’ Spillway with Episcopal and University High students to help plant cypress trees in an area being reforested. This exchange and project will continue next year when Episcopal once again visits Chile’.

Chilean exchange program coastal roots


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Students grow, nurture, and eventually plant the seedlings in order to restore coastal wetlands.

by Sarah Root Pulliam

he Quest for Peace in a World of Violence is an Upper School course that grapples with the

age-old problem of human violence. The course has a wide academic reach, exploring history, psychology, sociology, literature, music and art. Students take multiple field trips and directly engage with community organizations and leaders who are contributing to the justice and peace of our own community of Baton Rouge.

Trips and guest speakers represent areas as diverse as law enforcement, mental health care, addiction recovery, education reform, and community organizing. This semester, students visited the Baton Rouge Crisis Intervention Center, where trained counselors help people in crisis, and Angola prison. Guest speakers have included Police Lieutenant Herbert Anny, director of the Baton Rouge Area Violence Elimination (BRAVE) program, and Boo Milton, a Baton Rouge rap artist. In our final project, each student researched one aspect of the multi-faceted issues of violence and peace made a personal contact and interview with a local organization doing work in that area.

Quest for Peaceservice learning - classroom to community

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T by Deacon Charles de Gravelles

CSL Partnership Programs

THRIVE Academy Charter School Tutoring Program

ello, I’m Isabella, a recent graduate from Episcopal. I participated in the THRIVE partnership program since

my sophomore year, when the Center for Service Learning was first developed and the THRIVE Charter School opened. Throughout my three years tutoring, I watched myself, my peers, THRIVE, and our partnership evolve.

When I pulled up to THRIVE for the first time, about a dozen tutors showed up and parked in a small gravel lot and worked in 2 6th grade girls’ classrooms and 2 6th grade boys’ classrooms. This year there were over 40 tutors from Episcopal, and THRIVE expanded to three grades in three different buildings. The original 6th grade class arrived on campus performing multiple grades below grade level. Most students are now outperforming many of their peers in the state school system. Many THRIVE administrators have thanked us profusely for the hours we have spent with their students and the impact we have made on them.

We have found though, that it is a mutually fulfilling relationship. When we hear statistics about the school or how well the students are performing, we as tutors also take pride in their successes.

Going to THRIVE once or twice a week widened the perspectives of most of the tutors, including myself. It’s sometimes hard to relate to the issues that the THRIVE students go through. By tutoring at THRIVE, we learned a lot about students from different parts of Baton Rouge and what their lives are like.

It was an exciting time to be involved with the THRIVE Charter School. What once seemed like an extremely ambitious goal by Sarah Broome, to create a sixth through twelfth grade boarding school with hopes of sending students to college as strong, self-sufficient people, is now taking shape. With plans for their new campus on Brightside, THRIVE is continuing to expand and better their students. The success of the school has

demonstrated to us that lofty goals can come to fruition. It was also a great time to be a part of the partnership at Episcopal. At the time the program was initiated, it was enticing to be a part of something new. Now that it’s an established program, fellow students have seen its success and the satisfaction that we as tutors receive from it. It’s a win-win for both the Center for Service Learning and THRIVE Charter School.

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by Isabella ‘15

“This year there were over 40 tutors from Episcopal.”


Food and Hunger in the City

bout 2 years ago, honors student, and cherished friend, Corrinne Dunbar began conducting research

for her thesis on food insecurity and food access in Baton Rouge. As part of that research, and with the help of the Center for Service Learning, she was able to create and share a valuable service learning experience for her peers, Food and Hunger in the City. After the 2014-2015 school year, the partnership will have completed its 4th session.

Many people think of hunger as a problem that plagues only the children of third world countries. The goal of the partnership is to educate and bring awareness to students and future leaders about the issues of food insecurity and hunger in Baton Rouge. Throughout the partnership, students are encouraged to look at the issue of hunger through different lenses, in order to be able to recognize and evaluate efforts currently established to lessen food insecurity and lack of access to healthy food.

This year we went to serve at the Mobile Food Pantries, put on by Together Baton Rouge, in Scotlandville and North Baton Rouge. Through completing this type of service we were able to see local hunger through the eyes

of a volunteer, which is important because our goal is for students to be able to analyze volunteer efforts so that we can figure out which progams are working, which ones aren’t and how these efforts can be improved.

This year we also collected 3,500 pounds of food for Shepherd’s Market Food Pantry thanks to our school wide food drive, which is a record for Episcopal as well as the pantry. Theresa Sandifer, founder of Shepherd’s Market, claimed that it was the largest donation the pantry has received, besides their regular shipments from the Baton Rouge Food Bank. This year we

A encouraged 100% participation rather than having competitions between grades or divisions. We wanted the intentions of the students to be focused toward serving their community.

When I first began the partnership, I was just trying to support a friend with her new project. I didn’t even know that hunger was a major problem in Baton Rouge or what the word ‘food desert’ even meant. Corrinne helped me to discover a passion for service and for that I am extremely thankful. I had no idea that I would become this invested in Food and Hunger in the City, but I’m so appreciative of this awesome opportunity to become a leader through service. I’m looking forward to the next year, and hope that students will take advantage of yet another extraordinary opportunity that Episcopal has to offer.

“I had no idea that I would become this invested in food and hunger in the city.”

by Emma ’16

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PreK-3 through grade 12www.ehsbr.org

3200 Woodland Ridge Blvd., Baton Rouge, LA 70816 / 225.755.2684College Preparatory | Nondiscriminatory Admissions | Tuition Assistance Program

EPISCOPAL

Produced by The Communication Department

of Episcopal School of Baton Rougeand the Center for Service Learning

Jason Hubbard, Associate Head of School

The Rev. Skully Knight,Senior Chaplain and Associate Head

of School for Service Learning

Shandi Fazely, Admission and Communication Coordinator

Dianne Madden,Marketing and Public Relations Coordinator

June 2015

CSL Saturday Opportunities

Mobile Food Pantry St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Scotlandville St. Francis Xavier Church

Neighborhood Arts Program Gardere neighborhood

Shepherd’s Market Food Collection, Delivery, Stocking and Distribution over Thanksgiving

MLK Day events Capital Area United Way-refurbishing downtown historic cemetery BR Walls-painting project under the Mississippi River Bridge

Louisiana School For the Visually Impaired Spring Fair

Habitat for Humanity Youth Build with Catholic High and St. Joseph’s Academy

YelpBR! Block Party-Dog adoption event

Episcopal CSL 2014-2015 year in review pub

Documents

Transcript of Episcopal CSL 2014-2015 year in review pub