Food for Thought An Interdisciplinary Project Addressing Hunger In Our Communities May 2010

Step One: Define Service-Learning “Sally Citizen Activity” – What are the attributes/ actions that you’d like students to have And display? Head: Knowledge and Skills Heart: Attitudes and Beliefs Arms and Legs: Actions and Behaviors

Step Two: Discover Needs Which had more impact: Spending the afternoon with the local food pantry director or at the Greater Boston Food Bank?

Step Three: Investigate the Problem Students worked together in class by subject, and then together in small groups with each discipline represented, to investigate the problem of hunger

Step Four: Research the Solutions Small groups presented to one another and a discussion ensued to decide the best ideas for the full-scale hunger project.

Step Five: Decide on a Project Students decided they wanted to: 1.Increase awareness of the local hunger issues on campus and around town 2.Help the food pantries by recreating their marketing materials/website information/business cards 3.Hold a food drive 4.Help the food pantries increase their use of technology and ease of reporting 5.Participate in the Walk for Hunger

Step Six: Plan the Project Students again broke into teams to make timelines for the activities they had agreed upon and to assign duties to each member of the teams

Step Seven: Implement the Plan Students developed marketing strategies for their plans, created news videos and commercials for school and local cable access, and discussed their plans with local newspapers Each day, students evaluated the success of the weeklong food drive, offered facts, and kept the student body interested and competitive

Step Eight: Evaluate the Impact Statistics: developed and implemented a survey, and evaluated results English: developed and implemented focus groups and analyzed findings

Ongoing: Collaborative Environment Students worked together in class by subject and then together in small groups with each discipline represented Older students took on leadership roles with younger students, and leaders emerged in each class and within each part of the project Team effort was ever-present and positive working relationships were fostered

Ongoing: Reflection Students were able to reflect at regular intervals before, during, and after the project. Students were also able to assess the impact their actions had to the success of the overall project.

Ongoing: Public Relations Students publicized food drive and other activities to both school and town newspaper and television media. Partnered with both food pantries to help them in their PR endeavors.

Ongoing: Celebration Another impactful event was the soup kitchen lunch, that was held near the end of the project. Students reconvened to discuss the results of the project, and experienced one more lasting example of how hunger impacts their community

Ongoing: Curriculum, Instruction, & Assessment Instruction began particular to one subject Students cross-taught their peers Students were responsible for creating an awareness project that incorporated evidence of learning from each discipline Students were assessed on individual class work,, group projects on hunger, ability to meet goals of project design and implementation needs Met one-on-one to discuss project’s progress with teacher facilitator

Activity: Question 1 What will the world be like twenty years from now?

Activity: Question 2 What skills will a child/student need to acquire in the future you described?

Activity: Question 3 What were the conditions that make own your high- performance learning experiences so powerful?

Activity: Question 4 What would school be like if it were designed around your answers through Questions 1-3?

Final Quotes/Thoughts The crux of success or failure is to know which core values to hold on to, and which to discard and replace when times change. –Jared Diamond

Final Quotes/Thoughts I’m calling on our nation’s governors and state education chiefs to develop standards and assessments that don’t simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they can possess 21 st century skills like problem solving and critical thinking and entrepreneurship and creativity. -President Barack Obama

Final Quotes/Thoughts The illiterate of the 21 st Century are not those that cannot read or write, but those that cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. -Alvin Toffler