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Saints Answer the Call to Serve
Pre-School and Grade 1 students collected acorns for the VA Department of Forestry
The Pre-School through Grade 12 Civic Engagement Initiative Seeks to Develop Authentic and Innovative Solutions for Social Impact
St. Anne’s-Belfield School launched the first step of its Civic Engagement Initiative, appointing longtime Upper School Science teacher Dr. Bob Troy as the inaugural director of the undertaking. Through support from faculty, families, and community partners, the Civic Engagement Initiative aims to inspire the School’s students to develop authentic and innovative solutions for social impact.
St. Anne’s-Belfield has a long-standing tradition of community service and service learning. Community service opportunities have resulted from local partnerships with community organizations such as the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank and Ronald McDonald House. By appointing Dr. Troy as a full-time director, the School hopes to create more profound and long-lasting partnerships with local partners.
Students in each grade level will have opportunities to get involved through their regular academic curriculum and extracurricular opportunities. The youngest children will start with community awareness, learning how the community around them benefits from these types of partnerships.
Here is a sampling of how families and students of all ages have been participating.
This fall Mrs. Bennett’s Grade 1 class and Forest Explorers SAS Class gathered acorns to be planted at Virginia Department of Forestry’s Augusta Nursery in Crimora, Virginia. Ms. Becky’s and Ms. Elizabeth’s PreSchool 3 & 4 classes joined in the efforts, too, delivering their acorns to their Lower School friends.
“We want civic engagement to be part of who our students are. We want it in their bloodstream,” shares Dr. Troy. “By starting early, you let them see how modest and manageable efforts can make a real difference. As they get older, they will seek those efforts out.”
Whole families are invited to get involved, too. This fall, the School partnered with the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank on a food drive, International Neighbors on a coat drive, and collected new Halloween costumes for UVA Children’s Hospital. Through monthly Saints Serve Saturday events, families with children of all ages are also able to volunteer for local organizations. 34 Saints from age 5 to age 50 registered for Rivanna Conservation Alliance’s (RCA) Rivanna River Round-Up. Together with RCA volunteers, more than 175 bags of trash were removed from streams and trails.
An additional focus for Dr. Troy is to enhance the existing service-learning model for older students, encouraging them to volunteer with organizations consistently over an extended period and becoming trusted partners. Curricular enhancements are also in the works, modeled after the longstanding relationship between the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR) and students in the Environmental Studies Advanced Senior Seminar. St. Anne’s-Belfield is the only high school in the nation with a federal license to work with the DWR to gather and analyze data on the endangered James River spinymussel.
At the Middle School level, Grade 7 & 8 students in the Quest program raised money for Don’t Be A Monster bullying prevention non-profit by putting on a ticketed haunted house, learning how to be good partners with Special Olympics Virginia, and deepening their understanding of local food insecurity and working on potential solutions. The desire is for students to grow in their understanding of and commitment to civic engagement as they progress through St. Anne’s-Belfield, so that they become exemplary citizens into adulthood, with some becoming perhaps visionary leaders in their communities.
St. Anne’s-Belfield School launched the first step of its Civic Engagement Initiative, appointing longtime Upper School Science teacher Dr. Bob Troy as the inaugural director of the undertaking. Through support from faculty, families, and community partners, the Civic Engagement Initiative aims to inspire the School’s students to develop authentic and innovative solutions for social impact.
