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- News Archives: 2010-2017
Celebrating Martin Luther King with a Day of Service
Monday, Jan. 18, is Martin Luther King Day, and it isn’t a normal holiday for Guilford County Schools’ students. Instead, it’s a day for them to showcase their award-winning service-learning projects and an additional opportunity to show the impact they’re already making on our community. MLK Day volunteer projects and events are listed below.
At that same time, students, teachers and other representatives from 15 different schools will be at Four Seasons Town Centre to showcase their service-learning projects, enhanced by $300 Gift of Giving Grants. The grants went to students at all grade levels and for a variety of different projects.
“Service-learning projects like these are so important because they help drive home what a student is learning in class, and allow them to apply that knowledge to the real-world,” says Charlos Banks, executive director of student services and character development. “They’re gaining skills to make them more well-rounded individuals and learning that they really can make a difference in their communities.”
One example from the elementary schools is a second-grade class at Archer Elementary. Students investigated the needs of infants and children in foster care, and partnered with the Children’s Home Society of Greensboro to provide basic needs and wish-list items for children awaiting adoption or in foster care.
The “Spread the Love” project at Ferndale Middle involved collecting hundreds of peanut butter and jelly jars for the Salvation Army. They also used their grant to create a kid-friendly PB&J recipe book for families in need.
Grimsley High students addressed the need of healthy, accessible food in areas under-represented by larger grocers and food sellers in our community. They used their grant to transition plants grown in classrooms to two raised bed gardens in a greenhouse for the winter. The fresh fruits and vegetables are donated to the school’s food pantry which allows students to take food home.
Other projects included creating “cancer kits” for patients at Moses Cone’s Cancer Center, creating and displaying art around the community to explain the county’s food disparity problem, holding a “sleep out” to raise homelessness awareness and to create care packages for the community’s homeless population, creating a CD of original music and poetry to highlight the need for arts education, and more.
The event will also feature a winning T-shirt design from Monticello-Brown Summit Elementary’s ACES program. Volunteers who work during the Day of Service will also receive a T-shirt with the winning design.
This is the eighth year GCS has partnered with Four Seasons Town Centre for this celebration. Displays will be up until 2 p.m. A closing celebration for the Gift of Giving teams will be held in the amphitheater after the event.
The recognition continues at Elon University on Tuesday, Jan. 19. Two GCS students are invited to the MLK Jr. Commemorative College Coffee Program thanks to their award-winning essays. Brock Neorr, a sixth-grade student at Brown Summit Middle, and Cooper White, a seventh-grade student at Northeast Middle, each won first place for their grades in the university’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Essay Contest. This year’s theme was, “Why We Can’t Wait Now.” The students will receive certificates of recognition, $100 and other prizes.
MLK DAY EVENTS AND CELEBRATIONS
Friday, Jan. 15
Students at Lindley Elementary (2700 Camden Road, Greensboro) will listen to some of Dr. King’s speeches, starting at 2 p.m., followed by a school-wide assembly.
Monday, Jan. 18
Penn-Griffin School for the Arts students, along with other volunteers from High Point University, will work on projects around Penn-Griffin (825 Washington Street, High Point), including revitalizing the greenhouse, painting and setting brinks on the Human Relations Walkway and other enhancement projects. The work starts at 10 a.m.
High Point Central students will work with West End Ministries in the community garden, and students from Andrews High’s AVID Club will volunteer with High Point University’s women’s varsity basketball team to prepare “Meals of Hope” in HPU’s gym from 1 to 2:30 p.m.
Ferndale Middle students will be at Oak Hollow Mall’s J.C. Penney building from 10 a.m. to noon collecting blankets for the United Way’s Food and Winter Items Packages.
Tuesday, Jan. 19 and Wednesday, Jan. 20
Students will be back in school Tuesday and Wednesday, but the giving doesn’t stop. Every class at Morehead Elementary (4630 Tower Road, Greensboro) will spend a couple hours each day focused on giving back to the community in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Projects will range from kindergarteners writing to children in an African orphanage, to second graders building scenes from books with Legos to help younger students understand stories, to fourth graders teaching kindergarten students the importance of reading, to fifth-grade students collecting food for Greensboro Urban Ministry and many more.