StM News

This year, the Classes of 2025 and 2027 have embarked on an advisory-centered service learning curriculum that is integrated into the Upper School’s academic programming. In the fall semester, the two classes began learning about the issue of food insecurity by connecting with St. Anna’s Episcopal Parish’s Food Pantry. The pantry identifies families experiencing financial hardships which cause them to run out of SNAP benefits toward the end of each month, and helps fill the gap by providing two bags of groceries on a monthly basis. 

From there, the two classes dove into collecting, examining, analyzing, and publishing data about food insecurity, nutritional values, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Students engaged in mock applications and shopping for specific families to learn more about the benefits and limitations of assistance programming. They examined food labels and prepared data graphs on food insecurity and nutritional values. Finally, they shared their findings with the school community via student-designed flyers and posters. They led a schoolwide Thanksgiving food drive for St. Anna’s, which resulted in filling St. Anna’s pantry for the entire month of December. 

For students, taking part in this process has been eye-opening. 

"The service learning project of the first semester was humbling," said freshman Grayson Lambert. "It showed how difficult it can be to manage finances, especially when there is almost no money to spend."

This spring, the classes are taking all they’ve learned and collaborating with two other community partners: Education Equals Hope, an organization dedicated to providing for the education of those living in impoverished situations, and Empty Bowls, a grassroots movement by artists and craftspeople to raise money for food-related charities that care for and feed the hungry in communities around the world. 

The freshman and junior classes will sell their products during St. Martin’s Arts Fest on April 23, 2024. Several other grades will assist with creating bowls as well. The art represents the empty bowls of many families of the Education Equals Hope partner school, Ecole St. Esprit in Haiti, where students arrive each day with empty lunch boxes to be filled with rice and beans for the family’s evening meal. 

To develop interpersonal connections, Zoom meetings between our students and those of the Creole partner school in Haiti will be moderated by our French-speaking students. Preparations for the Zoom meetings include studying the connection of Haiti to New Orleans, working on questions to ask peers at Ecole St. Esprit, and virtual immersion into the daily lives of Haitian students.

This service learning is intentionally integrated into the curriculum, helping to grow empathy, purpose, and agency, as well as providing students with an opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of data in real world contexts. Additionally, it gives us opportunities to live our mission and Episcopal identity.