2008-2009 Service-Learning Northland Awardees
Sarah Walker, Lincoln Park Head Start
Head Start students in Ms. Walker's class will be creating note cards to be sold at the Gala on the Lake for St. Jude in January. The students will be designing these cards which will be apart of the auction at the event. Students will also be creating one get-well card to be sent to children receiving treatment from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, TN. The money received will be used mainly for materials.
Laura LaFontaine, Denfeld High and Morgan Park Middle
Ms. Lafontaine will be using the Service-Learning Northland Award for the purchase of supplies for her student's Health Fair. Her Health students from both Denfeld High School and Morgan Park Middle School will be collaborating on the planning of this Health Fair.
Jenny Masterson, Denfeld High
Ms. Masterson's 9-12 DCD students will be participating in an exciting service-learning activity where her students will be visiting Edgewood Vista and other group homes to perform different types of music and songs. The money from the Northland Award will be going towards the purchase of a karaoke machine and background music for her student's use.
Annette Petersmeyer and Martha Lippitt, Lincoln Park
Students in the FOCUS PLUS and ARCH programs at Lincoln Park School will be working together to improve the picnic tables and basketball courts of the Lincoln Park neighborhood. They will be partnering with the Duluth Parks and Rec. Department to fulfill this service-learning activity. They are also hoping to get the younger students at Lincoln Park involved. The money they are awarded from this grant will be used mostly to purchase supplies such as paint, basketball nets, brushes, tools, etc.
Catherine Nachbar, Central High
Ms. Nachbar will be working with her students on a service-learning activity to develop 'Random Acts of Kindness kits' for youth receiving assistance from Life House. Students will be meeting with interim director, Kim Crawford to discuss what are some items that would be useful to youth receiving service from them and then will begin developing the kits.
Chrissy Valento, Grant and Lincoln Park Elementary
Ms. Valento and her art students are partnering with Touched By Africa, a non-profit aimed at helping women in Tanzania develop their own businesses to provide for their families. Students will be collecting change to be donated to Touched By Africa as well as will make authentic art work from Tanzania.
Heather Lindstrom, Laura MacArthur Elementary
Students in Ms. Lindstrom's kindergarten class will be partnering with students in Denfeld High School's Study Skills Class. The kindergartners will be walking to Denfeld to visit with the Denfeld students and work on developing their reading skills as well as developing a mentor type relationship with the high school students.
Jean Priest, Denfeld High
Special Education students at Denfeld High School will be partnering with kindergartners at Laura MacArthur to become reading mentors. Both the high school and elementary school students will be given an opportunity to improve their reading and writing skills through this activity.
Sue Deetz and David Bartel, Woodland Middle
Students in grades 6-8 with developmental cognitive disabilities will be partnering with CHUM to learn about what homelessness is and the reasons for people becoming homeless. Students will then be practice what they have learned in their life skills class to develop quilts to be donated to CHUM.
Terri Monson, Unity High
Sophomores through Seniors at Unity High School have developed an exciting activity benefiting CHUM. Students in Ms. Monson's Environmental Science and Chemistry classes are working with a community member and local businesses to build a solar panel to be donated to CHUM to reduce electricity and heating costs in the winter.
Deb Porter, Morgan Park Middle
Students in Ms. Porter's 8th Grade Intro. to Foods class will be researching healthy snacks and nutrition information. They will then be presenting what they researched to community members at the Spirit of Health Festival on April 24th and 25th at Denfeld High School. One way that they will be sharing this information will be by making samples of the healthy snacks to be handed out at the festival.
Angelo Florestano, East High
Economic students at East High School will be developing mini-lessons to be taught to Woodland Middle School students. These lessons will include topics such as where to save your money and how to create a spending plan. The high schools students hope to pass along important personal finance knowledge to assist the middle schools students in making intelligent finiancial decisions.
Katie Kyyhkynen, Grant Elementary
2nd graders in Ms. Kyyhkynen's classes have partnered with Black Hill's Wild Horse Sanctuary in Hot Springs, South Dakota and Seed's of Hope Youth Ranch in Duluth to learn about cowboys, horses, and the western movement. Students will be creating clay mustang tiles to be sent to the Horse Sanctuary to be sold at their gift store, to help them continue the work they are doing with the wild mustangs out there. The students are also going to Seed's of Hope Youth Ranch to learn and help with horse maintenance.
Cyndi Venberg, Lowell Elementary
Students in Ms. Venberg's 4th grade class at Lowell are partnering with their pen-pals in Grand Marais to make fleece blankets and poetry books to be donated to teens at Life House and the Teen Parent Program in Duluth. The students have been learning about writing poetry and homelessness/poverty.
