Service Learning - The Fenn School

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Service Learning is a highly-valued school offering that enriches the experiences of Fenn students across their Fenn years.

It strives to meaningfully complement and strengthen classroom learning with service opportunities that teach civic responsibility and benefit the broader community. Each year, the service learning leadership team selects a school-wide service learning theme, allowing students and faculty to draw connections from the projects and activities in which we engage.

Below are examples of the types of offerings that they may wish to choose:

Cradles to Crayons

Grades: All

Description: Cradles to Crayons provides children from birth through age 12 living in homeless or low-income situations with the essential items they need to thrive - at home, at school, and at play. Cradles to Crayons collects new and nearly-new children's items through grassroots community drives and corporate donations. Donations are processed and packaged by volunteers and distributed to disadvantaged children across the state through a collaborative network of social service agencies and school partners.

Fenn students involved with this project will collect donations that will ultimately be delivered to the Cradles to Crayons Giving Factory Warehouse. During a designated "Fenn Family Day" at the warehouse, we will then roll up our sleeves and inspect, sort, and package all new and like-new donations into customized “KidPacks.”

www.cradlestocrayons.org/boston

Gaining Ground

Grades: Lower and Middle School

Description: Gaining Ground is a “soup kitchen garden” in Concord that produces organically-grown fruits and vegetables that are donated to local food pantries (such as Open Table Pantry) and various area shelters. In the fall, we help harvest crops and prepare the garden beds for their winter rest. In the spring, we weed and plant seeds or seedlings. Each year, with the help of volunteer labor, we are able to donate thousands of pounds of produce to food pantries and shelters.

www.gainingground.org

Green Team

Grades: Lower School

Description: Green Team is a group of Lower School volunteers that help with recycling efforts across the school. The boys assist with collecting the bins across the campus and emptying them in the tall brown toters. One day each week, students grab their lunch, and then complete their task for about twenty minutes. This helps our maintenance staff immensely and supports Fenn's commitment to sustainability.

Heading Home

Grades: All

Description: Heading Home’s mission is to end homelessness in Greater Boston by providing housing in conjunction with support services to help change the conditions that create homelessness. Over two thousand homeless and low-income people were served by one or more of their programs in the last year. The Heading Home organization placed 112 families and 58 individuals into permanent, supportive housing, and 90% of the residents in their permanent housing programs remained successfully housed.

In addition to helping support 1-2 “Up & Out” Moves, Fenn will provide opportunities for groups of students to decorate holiday cards for Heading Home families.

www.headinghomeinc.org

Land Conservation Trust

Grades: Lower School (Grades 4 & 5)

Description: The Concord Land Conservation Trust, a non-profit organization run by dedicated volunteers to preserve the town’s natural heritage, owns some of the nicest “green spaces” in Concord. It relies on volunteer individuals and groups to help maintain its properties. During recent years, groups of lower schoolers have grabbed rakes, shovels, and pruners to help create and maintain trails, repair damage caused by dirt bikes, and remove harmful invasive plants.

www.concordland.org

Tough Ruck

Grades: Upper School

Description: Tough Ruck Nation is a group of military, first responders, and civilians whose sole purpose is to Ruck in honor and in memory of our Fallen Service Members, Police, Firefighters and EMTs, while raising funds to support our warriors and families of the Fallen. Ruckers march with Rucks and carry the names of Fallen comrades with them.

The Fenn School Campus is the location of the starting and finish lines for this Race. Seventh, eighth and ninth grade students cheer on participants throughout the race and offer water, fruit, and other snacks to participants as they cross the finish line.

www.Toughruck.org

Open Table

Grades: Middle

Description: Open Table Pantry is located at the Unitarian Church in Concord. Open Table provides dinner and a bag of groceries to those in our community who need help acquiring food. Fenn vans transport 150-200 bags of groceries to the church from where the food is stored (near the Armory). Our contribution to the overall effort is important and very much appreciated. It is our hope that during the year the majority of our middle schoolers will help at least once with this service activity. In addition to helping transport groceries, Fenn also supports Open Table with food drives coordinated by the student senators.

www.opentable.org

Walk for Hunger

Grades: All

Description: Each year in May, "Team Fenn" participates in the 20-mile Walk for Hunger, raising thousands of dollars in pledges for Project Bread. Project Bread is the state's leading anti-hunger organization, contributing millions of dollars each year to more than 400 emergency food programs in 128 communities statewide. The boys get a great workout for a great cause.

www.projectbread.org/walk-for-hunger

Blanket Making for Buddy Dog Humane Society

Grades: Lower School

Description: Lower Schoolers measure, cut, fold, and prepare the colorful, hand-made blankets for the Buddy Dog Humaine Society shelter pets. This 501(c)3 humane society, shelter and adoption center in Sudbury, MA cares for and facilitates the placement of stray, homeless, and unwanted dogs and cats as pets in suitable homes.

www.buddydoghs.org

Dream Team for Senior Citizens

Grades: All

Description: Senior citizens, including former beloved faculty and staff, who still live in their homes but are unable to do all of the work to maintain their property can request a “Dream Team” to come to their homes to rake leaves, trim shrubs, stack firewood, turn over mattresses, bring lawn furniture into or out of basements, and so much more.

OARS

Grades: All

Description: OARS is the watershed organization working to protect, improve, and preserve the Assabet, Sudbury, and Concord Rivers and their tributaries and watersheds for the purposes of public recreation, water supply, and wildlife habitat.

OARS volunteers walk along the banks of these beautiful waterways to collect trash, tires, bottles, car parts, bicycles – whatever we find that shouldn't be there – for more appropriate disposal.

This dirty, yet satisfying, work has become a regional tradition for individuals and teams from local businesses, civic associations, scout troops, and high schools. We have worked in Westborough, Northborough, Framingham, Wayland, Sudbury, Marlborough, Hudson, Stow, Maynard, Acton, Concord, and Billerica.

www.oars3rivers.org

The Service Learning program at Fenn is designed to engage students from all grades, giving them the opportunity to participate in a wide range of hands-on experiences throughout the year. This work fosters leadership, friendship, and personal responsibility, and allows our students to understand new perspectives through an empathetic point of view.

- Emmalee Fay, Director of Service Learning