GSB Responds to Community Needs

by Peter Schmidt

Director of Studies

Community Service Coordinator

Walking around Gill St. Bernard's School these past several weeks I’m never quite sure what may appear when I turn any corner.   Though learning through service to the community is woven into the fabric of a GSB education from Primary to 12^th grade, opportunities to make a difference for others proliferate at this time of year. 

In the hallways outside the first grade classrooms, stacks of canned goods are piled alongside graphs and charts which integrate the canned good drive on behalf of SHIP (Samaritan Homeless Interim Program in Somerville) into the students’ math studies. Students count, categorize and graph the types of foods collected. Around the corner, a group of fourth grade students, who remembered taking part in the program just a few years earlier, sat down with their teachers to determine how they could help the first graders reach a goal of 1,000 cans by December 17^th.

This food drive is just one of dozens of projects at GSB at this time of year.  Middle school students are engaged in their own food drive in support of the Interfaith Food Pantry of Morris County, while also supporting their ongoing work on behalf of the Senior Citizens Center of Plainfield.  A recently completed food drive in the Upper School sent more than 1,500 items to the Interfaith Food Pantry, as well as twenty-seven food baskets to families served by the Association of Retarded Citizens of Essex County, where some students will be serving food at a holiday party in mid-December. 

In addition to the projects which focus on helping the hungry in our neighborhoods, the school recently donated more than 200 winter coats to FISH, a Dunellen-based agency that serves more than 1,500 families in Middlesex, Union, and Somerset counties.  A group of students in the Upper School’s HOPE organization raised more than $1,000 for the Valerie Fund, an organization at Morristown Memorial Hospital which provides support for children with cancer and childhood blood disorders. 

Speaking of those hallways and what you might discover there, a large bin in the Upper School locker area is full of pet food, dog toys, and other items which will soon be donated to Eleventh Hour Rescue in Rockaway.  Several other hallways have the familiar Toys for Tots containers, where students, parents, and teachers, have been collecting toys.  In addition, the school’s Spanish Honorary Society is also collecting toys for its annual party at the Dover Head Start program.

As important as the outreach, students learn about the value of service and their ability to make a difference for others.  In responding to the needs of others, the school community comes closer together as everyone does his or her part to make the world a little bit better place.

Swedish Teachers Learn from GSB Program

by Peter Schmidt, Director of Studies

“The World is Our Classroom” has been the motto of Gill St. Bernard's School since the merger of the Gill and St. Bernard’s Schools nearly 40 years ago.  Unlike many institutional mottos, the GSB maxim is put into practice in many ways at every grade level of the school.  From kindergarten students who visit pumpkin patches to seniors who experience the world through the study of comparative religion and the global economy, GSB practices what it preaches.

A recent visit of five teachers and librarians from Sweden brought this point home these past two weeks.  Traveling under the auspices of a European Union grant which permits teachers from EU schools to visit notable school programs outside of Europe, these educators were at Gill St. Bernard's School to see its award-winning research program in action.  As guests of Randi Schmidt, Head Librarian, and Ginny Kowalski, Associate Librarian, the Swedish visitors spent several days interviewing GSB teachers and students in preparation for extending inquiry-based learning into their schools in Uppsala, Sweden.  “Our heads are spinning with new ideas,” was the effusive reaction of Goren Brolund, the organizer of the visit, following an evening of music, dinner, and several student reflections on the Scientific Literature Review, which highlighted the visit.  “To listen to these students discuss some of the highest levels of current scientific research is inspiring, but a bit intimidating.”

The Swedish teachers are now back home but plans are in the offing for a visit to Sweden by a group of GSB teachers and students in the 2011-2012 academic year.  After all, at Gill St. Bernard's School, “The World is Our Classroom.”

Get a Grip: Ideas to Improve Small Motor Control in Children

by Peggy Campbell-Rush, Lower School Director

Did you know that good handwriting starts in the shoulders?  The ability for a young child to be able to cut, color and use a pencil starts with a full range of muscles from the shoulder down through the finger tips.  It is important for children to climb, hold on and swings on swings, move their arms above their shoulders to promote muscle strength in the full arm for example.

There are many things that parents and teachers can do to help with this.  Anytime a child can raise his/her arms higher than the shoulder area and keep them up for a few minutes it helps the upper arm.  Often fingerplays and actions can be done with the hands held high.  Rotating the wrists to warm them up is helpful before a fine motor task.  Squeezing stress balls, twisting a sponge to release water and holding tight to grip something helps the palmer arch in the middle of the palm. Cleaning something with very small pieces of sponge or taking the plastic upper part out of a paintbrush and painting just with the nib help the tri-pod grip develop.  

Lower and Middle Schools kick off their year of community service activities

Stone Soup Day on October 6  kicked off the community service efforts of Gill St. Bernard’s Lower and Middle School students to provide lunch to the Senior Citizens Center of Plainfield once a month. During Stone Soup Day, each Lower School child brings one ingredient to add to the soup pot, showing that if each person shares a little, everyone can have enough. The youngest child, in the school traditionally throws the stone into the pot, assisted by eighth graders who have been at GSB since pre-school.  The soup cooks all day and is symbolically shared by the children for lunch the following day.)  The event is based on the fable of stone soup. 

Throughout the school year, the younger students make soup and sandwiches each month, which seventh and eighth graders then take to the new Plainfield Senior Citizen Center headquarters.  The children hold special "parties," "song fests" and other celebrations to mark various events at the Senior Center during the year.  In the spring, the senior citizens are brought from Plainfield to Gladstone to attend a special performance of the Middle School play and to have lunch on campus.

The "Stone Soup" program, which won the Grand Prize in Scholastic Magazine's Kid's Care contest several years ago, is an ongoing tradition at GSB and involves everyone at the Lower and Middle Schools.