Cover Page Cesar Chavez Day of Service

By:

Cornerstone: Natural Classrooms: Stewardship

                                                                                       Cesar Chavez Day of Service

SYVCS worked in our Dragon Families to honor the work of Cesar Chavez. We addressed areas of need within the school that could be completed within a one hour work time.We improved our green spaces by picking up trash, weeding, and improving our campus facilities

Common Core Standards Addressed:

 ELA Standards 4.9: Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

Results:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yf1Ahjnm1I

The video above shows this event. We were successful in collecting several bags of trash, putting in 180+ man hours and  creating an lasting experience for our students.

 At Santa Ynez Valley Charter School we are a K-8 school with approximately 200 students.

One of the goals of our school is to improve the culture of our community through various programs. The focus started with the 8^th grade and kindergarten. These buddies saw each other weekly. As a school tradition, the Kinders would send off their 8^th grade buddies at our graduation each year with a special song honoring their transition. This grew into a larger buddy program that meets regularly and is cross-grade level with an academic focus.  Students from one grade will work with another to do different activities such as Calendar Counts, Reading, Language Arts, and Physical Education. The benefits of this were huge, we saw increased performance and interest in reading while building relationships with multi-age students.

Upon reflection our staff realized that the benefits from this program were invaluable with the potential of something even greater. If we could create an environment that would harness the energy and feeling of belonging and comradery across all grade levels the results would be tangible through improved behaviors, building relationships, and enhancing the culture of our school community.

 From this discussion Dragon Families were born. Students from each grade level are carefully chosen to represent one family. They will keep these families through their duration at SYVCS with members coming in as Kindergarteners or new students to our school.  Beginning in the Spring of 2015, we have 20 families all with students K-8 with an overall focus on Civic Engagement.

Our goal was to create an activity or event once a month where families could come together and reach a common goal. We first did this through team building activities relays, games, etc.  We completed the year with families working to complete our Cornerstone Community Service Projects as well as spending lunch time together.

The students now see each other more as family instead of merely classmates. They look out for one another, are more engaged, and go out of their way to say hello to their new families (friends).