By PRUE OSBORN

Students at Upland Country Day School are committed to community service through out the school year, but the entire upper and lower school comes out in force for the Martin Luther King, Jr. day of service Friday.

While the children in the lower grades will be working on service projects in their classrooms, the eighth and ninth graders - Upland’s top grades - will be working in small groups at various community locations. 

Before they get to work, students will hear presentations by Upland parent Dr. Richard Johnson, a psychologist and American Red Cross volunteer.  He has been volunteering as a mental health volunteer for the last eight years after local and national disasters. He said he plans to speak about the difference volunteerism makes and also about his volunteer work in New Orleans working with families displaced by Hurricane Katrina and recently in California with families displaced by the wild fires. He will bring to the school the red and white Chester County American Red Cross emergency response vehicle for the children to tour.

Head of lower school Mary Ledger said most of the service activities tie in with the curriculum throughout the year.

Pre-kindergarteners are making notes of kindness and appreciation to the Upland faculty. Kindergarteners are baking dog biscuits for the West Chester SPCA.

First Grade will be conducting a book drive for the Tick Tock early Learning Center and making bookplates. 

Second Grade is supporting Faithful Friends, a no kill, sanctuary for abused and unwanted animals.  The kids are collecting a variety of supplies to help care for the animals such as food, blankets, bandages, ointments, toys, paper items and shampoo.  The students will decorate the boxes to hold the supplies, and the teachers will deliver them. In addition, second grade will collect pinecones, cover them with peanut butter and roll them in birdseed. They will hang the feeders in trees for hungry feathered friends throughout the campus.

Third Grade is collecting school supplies for an orphanage in Uganda.  Those kids will be boxing supplies for shipment and enclosing letters to the children.

Fourth Grade, for the third year, is "Popping popcorn for charity." Beginning Jan. 22 and continuing through May, students will pop popcorn for the entire school to enjoy at lunch twice a week, at their sports activities and at their drama productions. They expect to raise $800 and target their profits to benefit Autism, Power up Gambia and The American Red Cross.

Fifth Grade is making fleece blankets for the Franciscan Care Center in Hockessin, DE & are also assembling a mailing for the Willowdale Steeplechase.

Clee Edgar, head of Upland’s upper school, said the sixth grade will be away from campus on the annual trip to Williamsburg. 

Seventh Grade will be reading aloud their favorite childhood books into a recorder to make books on tape to be included in reading packets for the local day care. Students in the 8th and 9th grades will split up and go in groups to connect with senior citizens at the Kennett Area Senior Center; to perform various tasks at the Oxford Senior Center; to do clerical work at La Comunidad Hispana and possibly the Chester County Family Academy.

Edgar said the children participate in community service all year as part of the curriculum “without missing too many math and Spanish classes.” 

Spanish teacher and community coordinator Sylvia Barreiro said, “Upland’s vision is so much about developing the whole child, nurturing children and providing opportunities for them to develop the four ‘As’ (academics, athletics, arts and attitude.)  In attitude are character and a sense of citizenship in the school community and the surrounding community where we live.  I see our role as facilitating opportunities for students and their families to partner alongside other organizations working to improve the lives of children and families in the community at large.”

She and head of school Dave Suter attend meetings of the grassroots group Bridging the Community in Kennett Square to network and learn how Upland can reach out to the community “to be the best citizens we can be.” Faculty and staff members also suggest causes that they would like the school to support. Choices are presented to the student council, which then votes on projects to work on through out the year.

This year the students elected to support the Kennett Food Cupboard, which is operated by Kennett Area Community Service.  Not only did they collect food, they held a tag sale to raise funds for food gift cards for extra items the food cupboard needed to fill baskets.  On several different days they sorted goods, distributed it and helped cart the items to the vehicles of the recipients.

The school also partners with the Tick Tock Early Learning Center’s bilingual literacy program and the Linden Street Project’s Study Buddy program in projects twice a term.

It is important, Barreiro said, for the school’s children to understand the “full cycle of volunteer effort”  - seeing the food collection at school, delivering it to the people who need it most and realizing how it helps.
 
“It’s not just handing things out to people. It’s partnering with folks and working along side them as they empower themselves.  It’s understanding and valuing their attributes and their life and their potential and understanding who they are.”

Upland also offers its campus and its facilities to worthy organizations in need of a gathering spot. For the last two years the Valor Cup, soccer competition for the children of migrant workers, has been held on the soccer fields in May. It involved the collaboration of the Chester County Intermediate Unit, Migrant Education, community leaders and Upland.

Barreiro said these service opportunities - during Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service and throughout the year - teach the school’s children the value of volunteerism and their value as members of their community.

This article appeared in the January 23, 2008 of The Kennett Paper and appears here courtesy of the author.