Becoming Good Neighbors

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Our Fourth Graders were charged this year with finding and executing a community service project. Luckily, we needed to look no farther than a small City park about a block from our school. Lincoln Square Park honors our 16th president with a IMG_0148monument erected by Lowell school children in the early 1900s and a small and pleasant green space in a neighborhood surrounded by businesses and multi-family houses right off one of the main roads in and out of the City of Lowell.Several weeks ago, students cleaned the park of a winter's worth of trash and planted a few flowers that we were able to purchase through a student penny collection. It was a great experience for our kids. That day they became park overseers - they are quite passionate when they go back to the park and find a dropped cup or wrapper.One of our community partners, Washington Savings Bank and Vichtcha Kong, learned of our project and gifted the students with a generous donation. This week, we put that donation to use. We re-stained the 6 park benches and added more annuals to the monument area. And the result?IMG_0178Well, the neighbors surrounding the Park are also getting into the excitement of restoring Lincoln Square Park into a slice of green community space.  Yes, there is still trash but it unofficially seems less.As we were staining benches, cars on nearby Chelmsford Street honked and  shouted encouragement to our students. A nearby business owner came over to help me open a container of stain and when the two of us didn't have the right tool to get the lid off, she involved the "guys" from a nearby car repair shop.  Grandparents wheeling babies stopped to ask us what we were doing and thanked us.  Sometimes we just got a smile or a nod, but the appreciation was loud and clear. And for the first time in my memory, we saw several folks just sitting in the park enjoying being outdoors on a pleasant mid-June day. It made me wonder: isn't this what the Park's designers intended?When a school becomes collaborator with the community, just look at what can happen! In addition to being centers for learning, schools must be good neighbors.

Community Service

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This year, one of our efforts as a school community was to engage our students in community service.  I personally think this is a great idea, especially for mid-elementary students who can be somewhat egocentric.  It's a big wide world out DSC_0351there!DSC_0360Fortunately for us, our service opportunity was within walking distance of our urban school.  Nearby Lincoln Square Park holds a monument to our 16th President and school namesake.  In 1908, Lowell schoolchildren raised money toward the monument's placement, so it seemed an appropriate connection to history to do something at this spot. This link leads to more information about the monument and its recent restoration.With the help of some outstanding community partners - Washington DSC_0357Savings Bank, Four Seasons Landscaping, and the Steve Purtell of the City Park Department - and our school community, students swept, raked, and picked up this beautiful gem of outdoor space in Lowell.  This was the first time planting experience for many of our students. They learned to dig in plants, tap plants out of containers, and even to use rakes and shovels.But most of all, our students learned that to make a public space pleasant and enjoyable, it takes effort and is the responsibility of everyone in the community.What better lesson could there be?