Community Service at Brooks Elementary School

Throughout our time at Brooks Elementary, students spent their social studies time in

class learning about what it means to be a good citizen. The students learn about different ways

to be good citizens to people within their school such as their friends, teachers, and parents.

Students focused on one character trait a week that related to being a good citizen. Some of these

character traits included bravery, kindness, and courageousness. All three of these words were to

be incorporated in a community service project that all the students would participate in through

this action plan.

Since their time during social studies was spent learning how to become a good citizen to

the people within their school, we wanted to help students extend that knowledge into how they

can become good citizens to people in the community. As Thanksgiving was right around the

corner, students were able to recognize that some people may not have food to eat with their

family and friends. These Kindergarteners saw this problem and wanted to lend a helping hand.

The community service project that these students participated in entailed customizing

and delivering paper bags to the houses surrounding the school. The bags also included a letter

from the grade level informing them of the project and how they can help. There was also a list

of items that were most needed, including non-perishable foods. After dropping off these bags,

the students went back the following week to pick up the bags and deliver them to the local Food

Pantry.

Through this study-guided trip, students were able to see how the work they were doing

would benefit the people outside of their school, in their communities. Community service is
defined as voluntary work that is intended to help people in a particular area. Participating in

community service takes bravery, kindness, and courageousness; all traits that describe a good

citizen. Students described other ways they could participate in community service such as

working at a soup kitchen, homeless shelter, or picking up trash on the side of the road. All of

these community service projects allowed students to understand how they can be good citizens

on a larger scale than just their school.

 Action Plan

Week 1

1. Discuss the concept of becoming a good citizen in the community with our mentor

teacher

During this first step, we needed to understand what our teacher had already taught the

students about being good citizens in their communities. Some of the questions that we

asked were: How have students learned taken action to improve their community? Are

students in Kindergarten aware of what community service is and how it can help them

become good citizens?

2. Teach a lesson fostering critical consciousness about people who may not have food

to eat each week

In the classroom, we did a read aloud to the whole class that helped introduce the concept

of poverty. We talked on a more basic level about how some people may not have

enough money to buy groceries for their families each week. This served as the base for

which students would use to fully understand how helping others forms good citizens.

3. Discuss how community service relates to being a good citizen & its importance

In this step, we made sure to create a discussion among the class to ensure that students

were able to ask and answer questions on their own. This topic can be a little confusing to

children who are so young so we wanted to provide ample time to discuss why

community service was so important.

 4. Engage students in a discussion about their favorite foods and how they would feel if

they never tasted that food (put yourself in someone elses shoes)

This step was meant to further explain the concept of helping others by donating food.

5. Draw a picture of your favorite food in someone elses fridge to figuratively give

your favorite food away to someone who has never tried it

Again, this step was made to ensure that students put themselves in someone elses shoes.

Week 2

6. Make bags (customize and attach letters)

Students decorated the front of the bags, complete with their handprints to add a personal

touch! Then, we staple the informational letter to the other side so that the homeowners

would know the purpose of the bags.

7. Deliver bags to surrounding neighborhoods houses

Kindergarteners went on a walking study-guided trip to deliver the bags to the houses

surrounding the school. Each child got the opportunity to hang a bag on the front door of

a house.

8. Discuss what people will put in the bags

After we returned from the trip, we explained to students what items will be put into

those bags. This helped them get a sense of what they would be seeing when they picked

up the bags the following week.

 9. Discuss plan for pickup from the houses

We discussed with the students that when we would go to pick up the bags, they would

be much heavier. So, we explained to them that we would need to drive cars beside the

houses in order to put all of the items inside and bring them back to school.

Week 3

10. Pickup bags from the houses

The following week, students picked up the bags from the same houses they dropped

them off at the previous week.

11. Organize and document items

Students brought the items to a large room in the school in which they organized the

items and wrote down what was collected prior to bringing them to the food pantry.

12. Drop off items to the local food pantry

Since the students involved in this assignment were only about 5 and 6 years old, they

were unable to visit the food pantry. Parent volunteers from the class took the items over

to the food pantry on behalf of Brooks Elementary.

Week 4

13. Write thank you letters for the people that donated goods

In order for students to express their appreciation for the people that helped make the

study guided trip possible, students will write thank you notes to those who donated food
 and to the parents that chaperoned the trip. This activity allows students to recognize that

it took a team effort to make a difference and encourages them to show gratitude for the

people on their team.

14. Write in personal journals about the experience

Students will use this step to reflect on their study-guided trip and experience with

community service. We also ask that they write or draw three things they are thankful for.

Week 5

15. Take a field trip to the food pantry we dropped the bags off at to learn about what it

means to be a non-profit

The field trip to the food pantry will allow students to learn about what a non-profit is

and what non-profit organizations do for others. This will spark conversations that they

will hopefully bring home to their parents and encourage research about other non-profit

organizations they may want to get involved in.

16. Spend some of the time during the field trip to donate our time and help out around

the food pantry

The donated time will allow students to explore yet another way that they can give back

to others. When students get back to the classroom they can brainstorm all the ways that

they can make a difference in their community through hands-on volunteer work and

donated good.
 Involving the Community/Resistors of Social Change

The best part of this study-guided field trip is that it heavily involved the community

surrounding the Brooks area. While the Brooks community was the one responsible for getting

the opportunity to donate out to the community, it was really the community that brought in the

goods that were donated. This means that the two communities had to collaborate in order for the

social action plan and study-guided field trip to be a success. In order to get the surrounding

community involved and engaged in what the Brooks Kindergarten team is trying to accomplish,

we attached a letter to the bags we put on their porches. This letter acted as a call to action for the

surrounding community and explained where the goods would be going once they were

collected. In addition to the surrounding community, we also had to collaborate with the ministry

responsible for the collecting the food to donate to the backpack buddies program and the local

grocery stores to give us the brown bags that we delivered to each porch.

We anticipated that only a few people may be resistant to the implementation of this

social action plan. In particular, we feared that community members may be turned off by the

idea of people dropping bags off at their porch without them being home. As a result, they might

have been resistant to fill the bags up and have someone come back by to pick it up when they

were not home again. There also might have been some parents that are uncomfortable with the

idea of their children leaving school to walk around the neighborhood. Even though students

were chaperoned by several adults, there could have been a parent that feared their child would

not be as safe walking around the surrounding neighborhood as they would be in their classroom.

While the potential fears of the resistant parent would be understood, it should be noted that

there were several precautions taken to ensure student safety on the study-guided trip. In fact,

students did not go anywhere alone; each student was required to walk with at least one buddy
and could not go up to a house without the buddy and one adult. They were also instructed to

walk as close to the side of the road as they could and signs were held up in the middle of the

road to stop all vehicle traffic when we had to cross the street.

Resources

The resources we used the most were the parents that were listed as WCPSS volunteers in

the schools system. As stated in the paragraph before, safety was of the utmost importance and,

in order to ensure that, we had to enlist the parent volunteers help. Another thing we discussed

before was how vital the community was in the success of this study-guided trip. We really

needed the resources of the surrounding community members to complete our task in supporting

people who needed help getting food for themselves and their families. It was the food resources

that we collected from the surrounding community that went to the food pantries; our

kindergarten team was merely the messengers. We also needed the brown paper bags from the

local grocery stores to collect the food in.

 Outcomes

This study-guided trip allowed students to recognize that not everyone around them has a

life that looks like their own. We really wanted students to understand that not all people get

food for every meal and sometimes families need help from others to make ends meet. We also

wanted students to understand that no matter how young they were, they could make a difference

in the community around them. This trip was meant to empower our students and help them

understand what it means to be a helping hand for someone who needs it. We wanted students to

begin to believe in themselves and see that they have the power to do good for others if they are

really passionate about doing so.

 Beginning Implementation

Results of the Study-Guided Trip

About a week after we delivered the food to the ministry, we received a letter giving

thanks for all of our hard work. The children were thrilled at the letter because it allowed them to

see that everything they had collected had been received. The letter was a way to solidify the fact

that those cans did not just disappear after they were delivered; those cans got to go to someone

who needed them. The entire study-guided trip was the first step in igniting the students natural

desire to do good for the world around them. It was the letter that allowed for them to turn a

seemingly abstract action of giving into something real. Since the students did not get to literally

give the food to those who needed it, the letter helped to see that they did in fact give even if it

wasnt their hands that delivered it personally to those in need.

In addition to this, all throughout the trip, students were having conversations with their

peers discussing what they were doing and why they were doing it. Students were making

connections and noting that they were doing all of this to help those in need. Also, during Jennis

culturally relevant lesson prior to our trip students were making connections between Maddis

fridge and the potential fridges of the people that would be utilizing the food pantry. The

students, however young, understood that it was not okay for others to go without food and were

excited to help others.

Next Steps

Moving forward, we want students to write and decorate thank you letters that will be

mailed to each household that left food to be picked up on their porch. It is important that
students recognize that the community was a vital part in helping us donate so much to the food

pantry. Students will also write thank you letters to the local grocery stores that gave us the

brown paper bags and to the parent volunteers for helping us stay safe during our trip. These

letters will also allow students to see that change cannot occur without a team of people that are

excited about making a difference. We will conclude this part of our social action plan by writing

in our journals to reflect the experience. This will help students organize their thoughts about the

study-guided trip and what they learned from participating in it.

The final step in the social action plan is to have the students take another study-guided

trip; this time the trip will be off campus to the local food bank. This will allow students to see

what a food bank is and make the visual connection as to where all the donated food went.

Visiting the food bank might also be a good opportunity for students to do hands-on, direct

service by helping those who need extra support. They may help serve food or organize the food

pantry. This is also another really fantastic opportunity for parents to get involved in and make

working at the food pantry a regular practice for them and their child.