5 minute read
MS: Community Service
BY JOYANN BRAKE // MIDDLE SCHOOL COMMUNITY SERVICE COORDINATOR
Collegiate Middle School partners with parents to instill great character in our students and to encourage a commitment to our community through volunteer efforts. We strive to create a culture of character at WCS and offer several enhancement classes, advising lessons, and community service options. One of the enhancement classes offered is Values in Action, which also is the heart of the volunteer efforts for Middle School.
Values in Action introduces students to needs in the community and helps students develop a plan to address those needs in pairing character development with community engagement. We connect with different agencies and non-profits in Wichita, resulting in field trips, donation drives, and service projects. We have partnered with nursing homes, homeless shelters, food pantries, The Lord’s Diner, refugee agencies, Wichita Family Crisis Center, Giving the Basics, Boys and Girls Club, City Hall, and more! Each semester is a different experience in Values in Action. Students help shape the direction of the class through their own interests and concern for specific causes in the community. Often, our parents have connections to local charities and non-profits, which we are able to learn from and tour. For example, this past semester, students Skyped with a social entrepreneur in Africa who uses business as a means to improve the community around him. We also volunteered at Giving the Basics, took a tour of Humankind Ministries’ homeless shelter, researched the causes of homelessness, brought in a police officer from the Homeless Outreach Team, and set up the Operation Holiday donation drive. Students also completed a newsletter about Empathy to share what they learned and to encourage other students to grow in their understanding and application of Empathy. The newsletter included a “Humans of Collegiate” section, which highlighted different staff that students may not know. A previous semester included a City Hall project in which 8th graders visited with our City Councilman and learned about his role and what it takes to be a good leader, and then heard about issues Wichita is facing. Students researched one of those main problems Wichita faces, using data and market research to aid them. They came up with four main proposals the city could adopt, referencing what other major cities have done, and then presented their proposals to the City Councilman and County Commissioner.
Through these projects and others like them, community service is celebrated in Collegiate’s Middle School! Students are required to complete at least five hours of community service per school year and can fulfill these hours through school-sponsored events or on their own. Last year, our 5th through 8th graders volunteered over 1,300 hours in Wichita! Community service builds character as children look outside themselves and realize the needs of others. They gain perspective, humility, compassion, respect, and selflessness. They learn that they can do something to help solve problems! Students also empathize with the needs they see, and often come back to school with innovative ideas on what might improve the lives of those in need.
The impact of Values in Action and community service is best understood from the testimony of its former students. One former student said, “I didn’t know what to expect when I first signed up as a 7th grader, but I really enjoyed the Special Olympics athletes and cheering them on. I still remember the ones I met that first year and look for them every year now when I go back to volunteer. This will be my sixth year in a row.” (By the way, WCS hosts Special Olympics Track and Field Regionals this spring.) Current Values in Action student, 8th grader Evan Yang, had this to say about his experience: “Mrs. Brake’s service course, Values in Action, is a great base to learn about how to get involved in the community. She teaches you so much about what the community does and how we can help through volunteering. After taking this course, I feel so much more connected and have a desire to go out and volunteer. I learned that what we do in the community has big impacts that we might not even see. Personally, I love our work with refugees and look forward to the Newcomer Field Days, where we invite refugee students to WCS for an afternoon of fun.
Volunteering is such an important component of a young person’s education for so many reasons. For one, it makes you feel so good inside and out. It teaches you that not all work you do will or should get you paid. Finally, it teaches you how to collaborate with others to get a common goal accomplished. As other students take this course, I hope they learn to appreciate the hard work that people in the community do to help others. I also hope that students can learn to volunteer because they want to, not because they have to. Finally, I hope that students learn that being a part of the community helps everyone, whether you know them or not.” It is so rewarding to see the passion grow in our students as they learn to care about the community in which we live! Some of our students discover for the first time that they are passionate about certain causes and want to make it one of their main goals to do all they can to help. Once students experience the truth that “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” it grows like a fire. My hope is that students bring away from class the value and joy of serving others, and see it is an integral part of who they are. As they touch humanity by carrying on the habit of volunteering and looking for ways to help, I expect our future and our world to be changed for the good by students from Wichita Collegiate School.
