St. Margaret’s Middle School Devotes a Day to Service

St. Margaret’s Middle School students participated in a day of service this week, each grade working toward a different service learning theme designed to help the local community and give students hands-on experience to develop empathy for others.

“Our grade-level deans and director of community life have worked with the faculty to weave service learning into the grade-level experience, in line with our mission and focus to expand our service programs and strengthen our ties with local organizations,” said Jeannine Clarke, middle school principal. “Getting off campus, seeing aspects of our community they may not have known about and then putting in time, physical, emotional and mental labor to making things better are all great things for an adolescent to experience.”

For grade 6, a visit to the Incredible Edible Farm in Irvine worked toward their theme to “Navigate Your Environment.” The urban farm at Orange County Great Park supports Second Harvest Food Bank to help feed the hungry in Orange County. St. Margaret’s students spent the day gleaning the fields, harvesting fall squash and supporting other needs of the farm.

The grade 7 students reached out to the San Juan Capistrano community as part of their service learning theme of “Risk, Respect and Responsibility.” All the students visited San Juan Capistrano Head Start locations to build relationships with preschool-aged students. Head Start is a government-funded organization that provides comprehensive early education, language skills, health and parent services to low-income children. Students also divided up and visited a second service organization including Laura’s House, Project Linus, The Ecology Center and Brookdale Senior Living, where they did service projects that benefited the community and deepened the students’ knowledge of it.

Grade 8 students visited Camp Pendleton to support Operation Help a Hero as part of their theme “Respect the Past, Influence the Future.” Students took part in activities to support troops returning home from deployment, like welcome-home bags, towel rolls and making signs. Students finished the day in advisories at school where they wrote a thoughtful letter to be mailed for Veterans Day.

Here’s a photo gallery of their day of service: