On the morning of April 27, the entire school assembled in the Hosley Gym for a day unlike any in Foote School’s 101-year history. After almost a year of planning, the school was embarking on its first-ever Service Learning Day, an ambitious initiative that engaged every student and faculty member in community-service projects on campus and around greater New Haven.
In all, the school would be participating in 48 separate service projects in 15 locations—cleaning up neighborhoods, parks and beaches; cooking meals for people in need; refinishing furniture for refugee families; making school supplies for students overseas; and much more.
The gym resembled a bustling airport terminal as students poured in. Group leaders held signs with numbers corresponding to their community service project and students wove through the crowd to reach their assigned group.
“Today we will be learning by doing, which is something that Foote School does very well,” Head of School Carol Maoz told assembled students. “We are going to learn about the needs and challenges of a city like ours. We are going to meet some of the people who work every day to make New Haven a better place. Many of you will also be helping groups that are beyond our community and beyond our country.”
After a few brief announcements, the gym emptied as students and teachers fanned out across the campus and the city.
On campus, Kindergartners, first and second graders sewed pillowcase sacks and filled them with necessities for the homeless, including fresh socks and toiletries. A mixed-grade group of students hauled lumber into the Jonathan Milikowsky Science and Technology Building to build bookcases and “tool boards” for students enrolled in the Horizons at Foote summer enrichment program.
In the art rooms, students sewed fabric into colorful dresses that will be taken to impoverished girls in Haiti by Ted Crosby ‘59, who has worked for many years to increase educational opportunity there. Another group stitched hats and fleece blankets for chemotherapy patients at Smilow Cancer Hospital. Behind the third grade classrooms, students and teachers refurbished furniture to donate to IRIS, a nonprofit that resettles refugees and asylum seekers who often arrive in New Haven with little more than the clothes on their backs.
Off campus, students traveled to every corner of the city (and beyond). Eight students rode a van to a church basement in Wooster Square to serve breakfast at Sunrise Cafe, a soup kitchen launched by Foote alumna Anne Tyler Calabresi ‘48. Eleven students learned about the hardships faced by parents who can’t afford diapers as they restocked the warehouse at the Connecticut Diaper Bank. Thirty-three students performed for, and visited with, elderly residents during a lunchtime concert at Tower One / Tower East in New Haven. Other students worked with community groups to clean up Edgerton Park, Edgewood Park, Long Wharf Nature Preserve and a section of Newhallville.
At the end of the day, the whole school re-assembled in the gym to reflect on the meaning of the day and watch a photo slideshow put together by three ninth graders whose job was to document the day. Students also documented their experiences in poetry, prose and artwork. What those reflections demonstrated, down to the youngest students, was a recognition that Service Learning Day wasn’t just about how they can assist those who are less fortunate, but what they can learn from them.
Seventh grader Rhea wrote about her day at St. Ann’s Soup Kitchen in Hamden, where a community volunteer named Lucy gave an impassioned speech to soup kitchen guests before the students served them lunch.
“She said that when people give to the community, the community gives in return,” wrote Rhea. “I think the thing the community gave to us today was learning about those who are not as fortunate as we are and being able to help them. Lucy also said that she never turned people away based on race, religion or mental capacity, and I think that if more people did that the world would be a much better place.”
Three years ago, the school’s strategic vision document set a goal of increasing the ways that Foote reaches into the community. Service Learning Day—and other community projects that happen throughout the year—help accomplish this by creating deeper connections with local organizations while providing a foundation for learning about homelessness, food insecurity, environmental justice and other issues.
Service Learning Day was deliberately designed to be hands-on to match Foote’s understanding that children learn best by doing. That’s why fundraising was not a part of the day.
“If you are putting socks and soap and deodorant together knowing that a homeless individual will be able to put on clean socks because of something you did, that’s not the same as giving someone money to go buy those items,” says Curriculum Coordinator Lauren Goldberg, who chaired the faculty committee that organized the day. “Students really feel how what they did made a difference and that builds greater empathy.”
Service learning projects were also designed to be age-appropriate so that every child at the school, from Kindergarten to Grade 9, could know they were contributing. Students were surveyed in advance about their interests and assigned to service projects based on those responses, giving them a greater sense of ownership.
For students, service learning projects tap into a deeper sense of purpose, observes Drama Chair Julian Schlusberg. He spent Service Learning Day working with students to make audio recordings of favorite children’s books for New Haven Reads, a nonprofit that works to increase literacy and empower academic success.
“Service learning makes students aware that they too can serve as facilitators and agents of kindness and generosity, and that they have valuable talents that can enrich the lives of others,” Julian says. “That sudden awareness, that glimpse into their own potential, can serve as a wake-up call for our students as they realize they are very much a part of a community that offers hope to others.”
Service learning also breaks down assumptions students might have about populations who are unfamiliar to them.
“When the sixth graders volunteer at St. Ann’s Soup Kitchen, which we still do every Monday, we talk about food insecurity and why someone would go to a soup kitchen, that the reasons can be varied and complex,” says Middle School humanities teacher Trevor Rosenthal, who helped organize Service Learning Day. “Even driving over to St. Ann’s—you drive two blocks from Foote and it’s a different world. For some of our kids, it gives them broader perspective that the local communities of Hamden and New Haven need our help. It’s not just the greater world.”
Foote has also strengthened community ties through the growing Horizons at Foote program, which completed its third successful summer of providing high-quality academic enrichment to 80 New Haven public school students in grades K-4. The school continues to share the campus with local organizations New Haven Youth Soccer, Eli Lacrosse, the Edith B. Jackson Childcare Program and the New Haven Organization for the Education of Young Children.
Additionally, every two years the school hosts a nonprofit leadership gathering in the Perrine Library, providing a forum for local community leaders to exchange ideas and make connections with Foote and with each other.
The greater New Haven community plays a prominent role in the Foote experience today, as it has for years. Along with service learning projects, classes make use of the area’s abundant natural, cultural and human resources to enhance learning.
Eighth graders visit New Haven’s world-class public sculptures as part of their yearlong study of three-dimensional art, and see a performance at Long Wharf Theatre of a play they have read in English class, often with the opportunity for a discussion with the cast.
Science classes visit salt marshes, freshwater streams and forests to explore how ecosystems function and how human activity impacts them. Sixth graders visit local temples, mosques, synagogues and churches as part of their study of world religions. Last year, first and second graders interviewed New Haven restaurant owners—from Italy, India, Cuba and elsewhere—as a way to learn more about the diverse New Haven community and the people who are part of it.
Classes frequently welcome parents and guest speakers—from imams to immigrant rights advocates—to talk about the challenges facing New Haven and the world, and how students can become leaders in finding solutions.
Community-based experiences also facilitate students’ social and emotional growth. Last year, the fourth grade started a new initiative to visit elderly residents at Whitney Center retirement home in Hamden to share conversation, writing and art activities. On a rainy day in April, Whitney Center resident Sandy Schreiber and two fourth grade boys worked together, cutting out words from magazines to make artful “affirmation rocks.” The art project was really a vehicle for the primary purpose: building students’ interpersonal skills.
“Kids don’t always have a chance to talk to older people who are not their family and this gives them an opportunity,” said Sandy. “They learn that senior citizens are people. We’re not senile—we’re with it.”
Learning about communities—how they form, who their members are and what makes them work—begins in Kindergarten when students explore the question “How is Foote School a community?” by discussing community values, interviewing faculty and staff, mapping the campus, making a timeline of school history and writing.
Students return to these themes throughout their years at Foote, examining community in greater depth and complexity by learning about African cultures, Native American tribes, immigration and slavery, ancient Greece and Egypt, cultures around the world, the Holocaust and the Civil Rights movement.
That spiraling model of learning reinforces key themes and leads students to deeper understanding, explains Lauren Goldberg.
“The educational theorist Jerome Bruner talked about the ‘spiraling curriculum,’ how you can teach meaningful subjects to children at any age and have them grasp the concepts,” says Lauren. “That’s what we are doing with our study of communities.”
While the subject matter and level of complexity changes, the broad goals of this approach are consistent: to help students learn to work cooperatively as a group; to recognize their unique talents and how they can contribute; to think critically about the role of communities and institutions; to build empathy; and to understand how individuals and groups share common characteristics but are also unique.
