School engages students in community awareness
For The Oklahoman
A program at Westminster School, a private school in northwest Oklahoma City, is using a variety of activities to help make its prekindergarten through eighth-grade students aware of issues that engulf the adult world they’ll enter one day. As examples:
• Fourth-graders were given $2 with instructions to use the money to buy a healthy meal at a convenience store.
• An eighth-grader rode a city bus that was 20 minutes later getting to its destination, an eyeopener in considering the necessity of being on time for a job interview or a job.
• And first-graders conducted a sock drive after learning about basic necessities that are needed among Oklahoma City’s homeless population.
These experiences were part of the school’s Connections program that was implemented during the 2015-16 school year. The learning program is incorporated into all grade levels at the 575-student school and is aimed at exposing students to the world around them, said Emmery Frejo, Westminster School communications director.
Frejo said the program was designed to help build awareness of problems that face the greater community, and when possible, to take positive steps toward solving them.
Topic issues that are being dealt with at different grade levels include peace, hunger, poverty, homelessness, the environment, pregnancy issues and literacy, she said.
“This program kind of goes back to Westminster’s mission,” Frejo said, which is to educate its students by actively engaging them in experiences that challenge them to solve problems as cooperative, confident and responsible learners.
“Westminster is unique in the flexibility of the curriculum and in innovating ideas,” Frejo said.
“This program helps kids develop a different world view, and it makes them more aware of their responsibility as adults.”
Ruth Ann Regens, assistant head of Westminster School who also teaches eighth-grade English, said the program was introduced to teachers in April 2016 and is being incorporated into the school’s regular curriculum throughout the school year.
“This helps them broaden their understanding of the world, and to develop empathy,” Regens said, adding that her own son, age 4, explored with other primary-grade students the overall concept of peace.
“I think my child knows a lot more about peace now,” she said. “He is very aware of the meaning of peace.”
Bob Vernon, head of Westminster School, said its students generally have advantages other children lack.
“It’s important for them to learn that everyone is not as advantaged — not for them to feel guilty, but to understand,” he said. “We hope that this continues to build.”
Focus on hunger, poverty
Frejo said each grade focuses on a particular aspect of social awareness.
“Tackling these topics requires considerable research and collaborative discussions which takes place throughout the year,” she said.
The focus for fourth-grade students was hunger, Regens said. As part of the study, students took a field trip to the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma this fall, where they helped assemble backpacks that are given to students at schools participating in the food bank’s Food for Kids Backpack Program.
Frejo said the Westminster children prepared more than 1,300 backpacks that will provide about 3,600 weekend meals.
Under the food bank program, preassembled food sacks and backpacks are filled with kidfriendly, shelf-stable food items and delivered to participating schools at no cost to the school or the child.
Frejo said Westminster also held a schoolwide food drive in October and November, bringing in about 1,100 pounds of food items that were donated to the Regional Food Bank.
In another hunger-related activity, several fourth-graders were given $2 each and told to buy a nutritious meal at a convenience store near the school. They found that it wasn’t easy.
One student said the experience taught her that it’s hard to eat a balanced diet on a limited budget.
“The healthiest thing was like $5,” she said. “It’s hard to eat a balanced diet.”
Regens said several students discovered that by pooling their cash, they could purchase items such as a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. Other students also bought cheese sticks, beef jerky and hard-boiled eggs.
The experience taught another fourth-grader about sales tax. When the tax was applied to the items he wanted, it pushed the total over his $2 allotment.
Eighth-graders this fall studied various aspects of poverty, learning about the federal poverty level and examining wages paid to men and women.
One student said she concluded that the federal poverty level is too low — especially if a family member has a disability.
“A lot of the discussions were from a political point of view,” Regens said. “There were different ideas as of how to go about (attacking poverty).”
One eighth-grader said that as part of the study, he recently ventured out of his “comfort zone” and rode an Oklahoma City Embark bus.
“I saw a lot of poverty” on the bus, he said.
The bus he rode was about 20 minutes late getting to his designated stop, he said.
“It’s hard to plan for delays,” he said, realizing that if he had been taking the bus to a job interview or a job, it would have meant trouble for him.
Meanwhile, first-graders learned about the concept of community, beginning with their classroom and extending through the school, the neighborhood, the state of Oklahoma and beyond.
Two students reported on what they learned.
“If we didn’t have each other, we’d all be lonely,” one said.
“If you didn’t have friends, you’d be alone and would be sad,” said the other.