"What's all this?" I asked.
"We're planting flowers today, remember?" one of them replied.
I was impressed. "I thought you were just weeding today. Did you change your mind?"
"No, we just thought we'd plant flowers, too!"
Hearts to Love, Hands to Serve. That's our school theme this year, and it was developed from the passage in 1 Samuel 12:24: "But be sure to fear the Lord and serve him faithfully with all your heart; consider what great things he has done for you."
These girls, and each of the other students in my class, were going all out.
Now it could have been that they knew they were getting out of regular class work. I am not so naive to rule that one out, but each student in my 4th period homeroom came to school excited to serve that day.
It began with an Apptivities type of lesson I had planned. I didn't have the iPads in my classroom at the time, but there was a promise...and I rolled with it. The rough lesson would revolve around the Hearts to Love, Hands to Serve theme from 1 Samuel 12:24 and a bulletin board I had created for my sixth grade classroom. I love putting up blank bulletin boards that the students can work on as the year progresses. For one, it kindles a curiosity, but it also allows students to create. And I found out that weeding wasn't enough for these girls. They didn't want to simply erase the blemishes on campus; they wanted to beautify it. In a small way, the girls were reclaiming their world.
Once a month in our middle school, we have a class period devoted to serving others, so we took our first day to plan out what we wanted to do. I released groups of students to all corners of the campus to identify problem areas. Some found areas riddled with litter; some found fence lines taken over by bermuda; some found play areas unsafe; and of course some wanted to pull weeds.
With the iPad, students needed to take a "before" picture of the problem area. The rest of the process would be to plan work materials to bring, get to work for 45 minutes, take an "after" picture, share the pictures with me, and then write a response to the activity on a blog post (I am an English teacher after all). When it is all said and done, we'll post pictures to our class Flickr account and create QR codes (linked to the blog page) on store-bought handprints to post on our bulletin board.
For our second session, then, we took our before pictures during our Wednesday homeroom service day. Students planned out materials, and I promised them they could have the regular English class period on Thursday to perform the work. They came prepared, and they served. It was unusually warm for the end of October, and many students were dressed in neon clothes for a "Red Ribbon Week" dress up day, but amidst the sweat and the dirt stains, the students attacked their jobs with energy. Some weren't even finished with their work before lunch time, so they asked if they could spend their recess finishing the job, to which I answered a resounding, "Yes!" Here are some pictures of their work in progress (you can even see one of me in there if you look closely).
The work is done, but we're still completing our after pictures and QR coded blogs, which will occur in our next homeroom session. I would just like to say I'm proud of those kiddos. They took an opportunity to serve and made it their own. I laid the foundation, but they built the house with their planning, gathering, and creating. I look forward to continuing our discussion on how we can serve the Lord in big and small ways.
