Learn and Serve Projects

Baxter County
Mountain Home High School
Contact: Susan Bergman
Phone: (870) 425-1215

Mountain Home High will continue to expand its recycling program.

A group of 24 MHHS honors students decided in 2005 to begin a school-wide recycling program. They met briefly in the summer with two interested faculty members and then in September 2004 began meeting each Tuesday after school with two sponsors.

Once they were awarded the Service Learning grant, plans began in earnest. They teamed with the self-contained class under the supervision of Mrs. Nora Regan. In November, ten CBI students and twenty honors students became the recycling team and toured the local landfill and recycling center for our area.

The group conducted a full school assembly to teach about recycling. They purchased appropriate paper and plastic recycling bins. After the assemblies at each school, the bins will be place on campus, students and staff will place paper and plastic in bins, the collection process now in place will be expanded.

The CBI students have a bus and have begun picking up the paper waste from three of our seven campuses. They began shredding the confidential paperwork and added that to our recycling. They transport the recycled paper to the Baxter Day Service Center. Approximately 2600 pounds has been recycled to date. Mrs. Regan is also on the Center board of directors and is completely devoted to sustaining this program as it is direct job training for her students.

The goal is to have all of our K-12 campuses involved in paper/plastic recycling by the end of the year. Then, we hope to explore using appropriate food waste in composting and gardening.

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Benton County
Gentry High School
Contact: Tanya Patterson
Phone: (479) 736-2667

The Gentry High School Service Learning Class is using Learn and Serve America Grant funds to implement it's new attendance program. The project began by students in the class completing a needs assessment of the school. They wanted their project to have a positive impact on the school environment. Attendance was the need the students decided to focus on.

This project will help students to see the importance of having regular school attendance. It awards students by placing their name in a drawing for each week they have perfect attendance. One name from each grade level is drawn for the grant funded award. Students with perfect attendance for the semester will have an opportunity to receive another award. The students with perfect attendance for the entire school year, will have another chance to receive an award.

Students will begin to see the importance of good attendance. They will start to make connections of attending school to attending institutes of higher education or the work force. The value of attendance will be stressed throughout the entire project.

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Clark County
Cabe Middle School
Contact: Jean Smithey
Phone: (870) 353-4311

As part of the grant, the students will participate in two service-learning projects. For the first project, the students will write and publish a fact booklet for the City of Gurdon. The booklet will be given to Gurdon's new residence. The Gurdon Chamber of Commerce, along with Mayor Clayton Franklin, will help the students plan the layout of the booklet. The Chamber of Commerce will also help edit the booklet before the students publish it. When published, the booklets will be available at City Hall.

For the second project, the students will work in conjunction with the Library of Congress in its effort too record the stories of World War II Veterans. Students will interview local veterans and record their stories.

A leadership team will be organized. This team will meet after school one day a week, and will be instrumental in developing the service-learning projects. They will help write newspaper ads and speak at local clubs. Each leadership team member will receive the workbook, Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens, to help the students develop their leadership skills. The requirements for eligibility to be part of the leadership team will be to demonstrate positive classroom behavior and show themselves to be dependable.

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Cleburne County
Quitman Elementary School
Contact: Kelly Allen
Phone: (501) 589-3485

“Reading at Renegar's"—12th grade students will write stories and poems that will be read to the elderly residents of Renegar Apartments twice per month. The students will also keep a reflection journal. There will be a recognition banquet at the end of the year for all those involved in this program.

“Walking Trail”—The Quitman Community has built a new walking trail. Med-Pro students will talk to Renegar residents, HIPPY and Headstart children about the importance of exercise. The Foods and Nutrition class will talk to Renegar residents, HIPPY, Headstart and all Quitman students in grades K-12 about the importance of healthy eating and teach the new food pyramid. The Buildings Trade class will help design and build the sign to be placed at the new walking trail, they will also help Master Gardeners plant bushes, trees and flowers at the walking trail.] All programs will be invited to the Walking Trail Dedication Ceremony where the chief of police will talk to everyone about safety while using the walking trail.

“Parent/Student Reading Night”—Parent and students in grades K-8th will read together and students will teach their parents how to take the reading level quiz on the computer, this will increase both parent and students reading skills.

“Story Hour”—Community members read to Preschool-2nd grade students once per month. After the story the children do crafts or play games.

“Community Closet”—Clothes, shoes, and school supplies are available to students, parents and community members year round.

Students in grades K-12 hold a yearly food drive and humane society drive. The students also collect and count items for the school wide recycling program.

Students will help write and take photos for the local newspaper and the school's newsletter.

Students and Master Gardeners--The Master Gardeners will help the students plant flowers, bushes and trees and will teach them how to care for them, this will be an ongoing project.

Local Police and Fire Department will visit and talk to students about safety and career awareness. A mock drinking and driving accident will be planned using local police, fire, ambulance, air rescue and other community members for all 9th-12th grade students.

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Columbia County
Emerson High School
Contact: Regina Jean
Phone: (870) 547-2862

Most of the students in the Emerson School District do not live on farms and miss out on the opportunities that come with farm life. It was decided by staff members and alumni members that a "hands-on animal lab" was needed for the students and classes to meet the needs of our agriculture program and enrich different areas in the sciences.  Therefore, a 40'x80' facility will be built by volunteers to meet the needs of our students.

Elementary and high school students will be allowed to house livestock projects at the lab and learn the responsibility of caring for an animal. In addition, high school students will use it for participation in lab activities for animal science and biology classes. They will work collaboratively with the elementary teachers by offering knowledge and skills to help teach agricultural concepts to the elementary students.

Due to the declining interest in small rural farms, students will learn the importance of agriculture and how it plays an important role in our society. Using funding from the Learn and Serve Grant and relying on the loyal citizens in the community who desire to partner with Emerson school, the students will be afforded opportunities not traditionally granted.

An added asset of the project will be involving students with discipline problems in long-term projects.  The animal lab project will be used as an intervention for students demonstrating risky behavior. The desire is to  develop character traits that will have a positive impact on young lives and create a desire to change.

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Craighead County
Valley View Elementary
Contact: June Horne
Phone: (870) 935-1910

The main project of the Valley View Learn and Serve America Grant is the Believe and Achieve After School Tutoring Program. This program provides service opportunities for junior high, senior high, and college students in an after-school tutoring/mentoring program for elementary at-risk students. Student volunteers are matched up with K-3 children to develop personal relationships as they tutor and mentor them. Regular classroom teachers are available to offer suggestions to the volunteers and prescribe the daily activities. Volunteers also have access to America Learns, a strategies network, to assist them in working with the children.

Service learning volunteers assisted in our community by going to an evacuee shelter to play games with the children and by working in a community services “clearinghouse,” helping to sort and organize donated items for hurricane victims.

Volunteers organized a popular pie toss booth for our school’s fall festival and raised more money than any other booth. This money will go to Habitat for Humanity to purchase a specific item for the next home that will be built in Jonesboro. Projected date for this project is early 2006.

We have also made plans to volunteer at the Southwinds Retirement Center. Volunteers will help one of the residents set up a library for the center and then read to residents who have difficulty reading for themselves.

We also hope to begin a recycling project in the elementary school during the second semester. Our goal is to make our school a K-12 service learning school.

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Crawford County
Central Middle School
Contact: Lisa Mayfield
Phone: (479) 474-7059

Central Middle School will be working to educate our students and community about the democratic process, voting rights and privileges, and civic in cooperation with serving our community by exercising a voter’s registration campaign and providing a government meeting room for our newly formed student government, as well as community and civic organizations. Our entire school will conduct a community survey of eligible voters in order to provide our community with statistics of those who are not registered to vote. We will be educating our community about the importance of serving the local, state, and federal government by exercising their rights as a voting citizen. Students will be graphing the data and presenting their findings to local and state government officials. CMS will also form a student government while learning about the democratic process. This newly formed student government will be mentored by school board members and city officials. Students will observe meetings in order to learn the meeting process. CMS students will in turn give back to the community in helping with the “Van Buren City Beautification” project. Every student and teacher will be involved in this learn and serve project. The community will benefit from the voter’s registration campaign, city beautification project, and government meeting room at Central Middle School.

City Heights Elementary School
Contact: Mary McCutchen
Phone: (479) 474-6918

Learn and Serve is a school-wide program at City Heights. These are the main projects:

1. Students learn about pet care from research and interviews with veterinarians. Students prepare a “How to Care for your Pet” booklet to be distributed to other students. Students also volunteer at the local Humane Society.
2. Students research the vegetables best suited to grow on school property. Students learn how to develop a garden from planning the location, tilling the garden, planting, caring for, and then harvesting the vegetables. Upon harvesting, the food will be donated to the Frank Turner Gospel Rescue Mission and the local food bank.
3. Students plan Saturday lunches, prepare them, and deliver to adult workers at Habitat for Humanity building sites.
4. Students choose a product to market during lunch and recess and will use profits to sponsor a child in the Make A Wish Foundation.
5. Students work with the Master Gardeners Club and the County Extension Office to plan, plant, and care for a garden on school grounds. Upon harvesting, the food will be donated to the Frank Turner Gospel Rescue Mission and the local food bank.
6. Students participate in learning activities concerning the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his contributions to society. Students and parents will hold a coat and story book drive on this day, whereby community members can drop off used coats and books that will be donated to the local homeless shelter and the Salvation Army.

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Desha County
Conner Jr. High
Contact: John R. James
Phone: (870) 222-3600

Conner Jr. High EAST Lab is working with High School EAST students, who were former Conner EAST students, on the Japanese Relocation Museum to be located in McGehee. Students will work on documenting and cataloging artifacts, pictures, etc and place them in display cases, viewing tables and other areas. Community members and other contacts made with former residents of the internment camps will be contacted for an donations of items and to keep them informed of the efforts of our students in preserving this period in history. This will be a hands-on history lesson for our students.

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Faulkner County
Vilonia Middle School
Contact: Cathy Riggins
Phone: (501) 796-2940

The Vilonia Middle School's 2005-2006 Learn and Serve Grant will focus on the following programs: (1) Veteran's History Project (2) School Bus Safety Campaign (3) Middle School Outdoor Educational / Recreational Area (4) Service-Learning Elective Class.

Students will participate in each of these programs to integrate service-learning across the curriculum at Vilonia Middle School. Specific needs of the district will be addressed with a strong focus on improving literacy, math, and civic skills. A special emphasis will be placed on the educational environment and the role students can play in creating such an environment as they participate in service activities. Through this grant, it is the Vilonia Middle School's mission to create a learning environment where students are not only taught skills, but are given an opportunity to practice skills through service that foster mastery of educational concepts.

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Polk County
Van-Cove High School
Contact: Pamela Bell
Phone: (479) 474-7059

The Van-Cove Leadership and Service Learning class has received the Learn and Serve Grant offered through the Arkansas Department of Education. The funds will be used to help the class with the following projects:

1. Veterans Projects- The students are conducting interviews of local area veterans to send to the Library of Congress and post as video streaming to our school web site.
2. Local Web Site - Students are working on improving our school web site by creating a web page for each teacher and links for each club and activity.
3. Youth Summit - Students are involved in the planning process of the area youth summit where they will help plan the entire summit for 250 area ninth grade students. They will prepare and present a mini session on internet safety at the Youth Summit.
4. Community Training - Students will organize and conduct community training on internet safety and any other computer applications that are deemed necessary according to the evaluation forms from the community training's.

This grant was written by six high school students and their teacher in the Leadership and Service and Learning Class.

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Pulaski County
Little Rock Central High School
Contact: George West
Phone: (501) 447-1554

Our Serve & Learn proposal is a combination of an interdisciplinary 9th grade unit on civil rights, oral history interviews with older adults, and a student-produced Web site called "The Central High Civil Rights Memory Project." The curriculum package was piloted last year and includes a dozen lessons tracing the struggle to protect civil rights in the written rule of law. The lessons lead up to the events at Central High at the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s-60s. In the spring students are encouraged to interview an older adult in their family or community who has a personal story to tell about the changes that occurred during desegregation.

Our Serve & Learn proposal calls for (1) collecting an additional 300 interview essays from the 9th grade Civics students and (2) tape recording at least 25 of interviews with adults in the community. We will invite guest speakers to individual Civics classes so that every 9th grade student will have a chance to hear personal stories about these historic times. We will also organize a History Talks event in the community in order to reach out to other older residents who have a story to share. Finally, we will turn the essays and the videotapes into links on the "The Central High Civil Rights Memory Project" web site

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St. Francis
Forrest City High School
Contact: Johnetta Crumbly
Phone: (870) 633-1464

The Forrest City High School Learn and Serve Program will continue tutoring after school students in math. This year, we will work with the On-Line Credit Recovery courses for senior students. The student tutors will work with these students to help them pass the courses needed for graduation. In addition, the history classes at Forrest City High School will work with the students on a living history project. These students will interview historical citizens in our community and report to their classes. Some of the interviews will be produced and shown on Mustang 17 TV.

We will continue our project of working with the evacuees from the Katrina Hurricane. Learn and Serve volunteers will also do a project with the Mustangs Against Drugs and Alcohol.

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Van Buren County
Shirley Alternative Learning Center
Contact: Vicki Sandage
Phone: (501) 723-4907

Beginning in 1997, Shirley Schools’ service learning program has evolved into projects that fall into three major categories. First, Shirley Alternative Learning Center students in grades 8 through 12 develop and present curricular materials in life skills, character principles, and math resources to third grade students. Created using PowerPoint, many of the materials are multimedia presentations that include voice, music, text, illustrations, and animations and are presented weekly following a pretest to assess students’ current knowledge base. Additional content will include risky behaviors targeting elementary and middle school students. Presentations will be made available to other school districts through the service learning web page on the district’s web site, and students will present content to students in a neighboring district.

The second project category includes maintenance of six flower garden plots, some of which memorialize teachers and students who have been lost to us within recent years. The Van Buren County Master Gardeners work directly with elementary and high school students to help plan, plant, and maintain the garden projects.

In our third category of service learning activity, we provide workshops that train adults along with students from upper elementary through high school levels in the process of identifying areas of need that can be addressed through service learning projects and developing plans for implementing and evaluating responses. The students have identified initiatives that include starting an elementary safety information program, placing safety lights on the highway that bisects the campus, maintaining a recycling program, operating a food closet, supporting a SADD chapter, publishing the early oral history of Shirley, and creating an orientation video for parents and students new to our district.

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Washington County
Fayetteville High School
Contact: Connie Crisp
Phone: (479) 444-3050

Service Learning at Fayetteville High School utilizes several venues. The first is service credit through Act 648 for students who volunteer on their own time. Initiation and expansion of Act 648 participants will be one focus.

Another source of service learning for students is through the service learning class itself. In this literacy-based semester class, students complete all components of the service learning model, as well as reading and writing about service. Some projects involve the entire class, and some involve smaller groups of students. Two projects in which the entire class participates are on-campus recycling and visiting veterans weekly at the VA Hospital.

Small group/individual projects include assisting at Children’s House (a center for abused children), LifeSource (a food pantry for the needy), visiting patients at City Hospital (geriatric center), serving lunch at the Senior Citizens Center, tutoring special needs students at area schools, grounds keeping at the Ozark Botanical Society Gardens, serving as pages for poll supervisors on election night, and performing in a Veterans’ Celebration at Butterfield Trail Village.

The service learning class also volunteers on campus. Students may tutor ESL students, act as media center aides, assist community volunteers in our district’s Homeless program closet, partner with the PTO in campus beautification, and offer assistance in our district’s administrative office.

The final outlet for service learning in this program is through an oral communication class. In this class, students learn interviewing techniques, teach them to junior high students, and practice them by interviewing veterans in conjunction with the Veteran’s History Project.

Goals for all aspects of the program for the coming year include improvement and expansion of the existing program.

Woodland Jr. High School
Contact: Chris McClure
Phone: (479) 444-3067

The Service Learning program at Woodland Junior High consists of several components.  Woodland has Service Learning as an elective class which is blocked with English.  Students in the class go into the community two days each week for service activities.  The students work with such agencies as the Senior Activity Center, Fayetteville City Hospital (a geriatric center), Headstart, Children’s House (a pre-school for abused or neglected children), Elizabeth Richardson Center (a pre-school for children with disabilities), local elementary schools (tutoring), and LifeSource (a faith-based organization that offers a food pantry, tutoring, adult-ed classes, etc).  Students complete journals and other writing based on their experiences and participated in small-group and whole-class reflection.

In addition to service activities during class time, students assess the needs in the community and their own interests, then plan and implement projects that consist of six hours of service each quarter.

Woodland students have been involved with the Veterans History Project for several years.  Students study history (World War Two), learn interviewing techniques, plan questions for their veteran, interview veterans, edit the recorded footage, burn a DVD, and submit the video to the Library of Congress.  A DVD of the interview is also given to each veteran and local school and public libraries.

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White
Beebe Middle School
Contact: Melissa Gallegos
Phone: (501) 726-3587

In the spring of 2004, the McRae School District annexed with the Beebe School District. At the end of the 2004-2005 year the present school at McRae officially closed and became Beebe Middle School serving four hundred and thirty five fifth and sixth graders. Due to the strong tradition and loyalty to the school at McRae by the local citizens, this program seeks to unify the community by building a bridge of unity and a sense of pride between the McRae and Beebe communities. This project will provide a safe area for a walking/fitness trail and an outdoor wireless classroom that will be available for students and the citizens of the community. Another component of this program is the development of markers along the walking/fitness trail that inform participants of a historic timeline concerning the McRae community. This will ensure that certain events of the school and community will be honored and remembered.

The trail will provide a safe walking and physical activity area, which will promote a healthy lifestyle.This will enable the community and the students to be responsible for their own health. The students will work collaboratively with parents and the community by assisting with the technology aspect of the outdoor wireless classroom and the making and use of the walking/fitness trail. The students will interact with community members by conducting interviews, researching and writing historical entries for the historical timeline.

The students will take leadership in this project by planning and designing the walking/fitness trail and later by developing a plan to utilize and maintain the walking/fitness trail fostering civic responsibility.

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