Young students learn about community through volunteering

Who are the people in your neighborhood? This was the question posed by a Sesame Street song in 1995. The answer is memorable:

“Well, they're the people that you meet,

When you're walking down the street,

They're the people that you meet each day.”

Today, students at the Lark Skola, a not-for-profit, independent elementary school, are diving deeper into finding out who and what makes up the community of Whitefish.

The school says they use mixed-age groups for classroom activities, community projects and nature immersions, as well as 1-on-1 sessions with learning specialists.

Recently, the school began introducing a program they learned from an independent preschool and elementary school in New York City in which students make models and plays based on fixtures in the community. The idea is that students learn about what their community offers.

“You visit the community location and then you embed your math and phonics, everything into these outings,” said Brooke Ober, a specialist with Lark Skola. “The point is, you are learning about how a community works.”

For their latest six-week project, students visited the North Valley Food Bank. They were divided into groups and worked to draw three different rooms at the food bank. Once back at school, they proceeded to recreate the facility in their schoolroom with blocks by using their drawings and photos.

“The final piece is a dramatic play where they actually act out the systems to embody the understanding of how the food bank helps the community and vice versa,” Ober said. “(Students) are getting more of a foundational understanding and embodiment of who the people are in the community and what they do and how they help each other.”

Ober said that although most adults feel they understand the workings of a community, she was surprised to hear that 40,000 people a month are getting food from Whitefish’s food bank.

Sophie Albert, Executive Director of the North Valley Food Bank (NVFB), said they enjoy having the young students tour and volunteer at the food bank.

“We at NVFB want every child to know how to take care of one another,” said Albert. “We also want them to feel welcome here and know that they can get food here whenever their families need it.”

She retold a story about a little girl who proudly shared with her classmates that she and her mom shop at NVFB.

“I loved that because for her the food bank is a safe place to visit,” said Albert. “I hope that the next generation can grow up without facing stigma and shame around food insecurity.”

The food bank has 80 volunteer jobs that need to be filled each week. Those jobs include grocery store food rescue, gleaning produce, stocking the NVFB grocery store, helping customers shop, preparing boxes and bags for the drive-thru and delivery customers, stacking pallets of food, making kids’ snack bags, and many other tasks.

During each of their two visits to the food bank, the Lark Skola students helped prepare snack bags in assembly line fashion. They were keen to outdo themselves and pack more bags than they had assembled the first time and their focus was intense.

It seems there is a volunteer job for everyone and some of the tasks, like building kids’ snack bags are fun for families with children.

THE LARK SKOLA moved to their new location in the old Masonic temple above Loula’s Cafe this year and they are enjoying being in the heart of the city. They travel to places around town and to various parks each week and will soon be taking the S.N.O.W. Bus to different locations.

The school meets four days a week and while it is intended to be a school for grades first through third, this year they have a maximum of 15 students, made up, primarily, of first graders and a few second graders.

On Thursdays, the students have an outdoor day at the Haskill Basin location to foster a strong connection with nature. According to Ober, one of the foundational underpinnings of the school is, if it can be done outside, they do it outside.

Early in the year, students considered an activity they like to do, like skiing, and worked on drawing a web of all the people that help make that activity happen. In this way, Ober says students see how people are interconnected.

She said this next generation can click a button on a computer and get what they want from Amazon or another online retailer.

“They’re not actually understanding all of the parts and people that are involved in what they’re receiving,” said Ober. “So I feel like this is helping… work through that and here are all the behind-the-scenes people and parts that are working together to make this happen. It’s not just happening.”

The school stresses collaboration, reciprocation and learning how, in this fast-moving, technical world, a community works together to make things possible.

“To me, this feels like a really unique opportunity to see if we can help, with empathy forming, and perspective taking and collaboration and have kids understand not only how community works but their role in a community, that they also have a responsibility and that responsibility is just as important as everybody else’s,” Ober said.

The food bank is experiencing a record-high need for assistance, and volunteers are essential to what they are able to offer to community members in need. Albert added that their food budget has “gone through the roof.” She said they are in need of monetary donations as well to purchase food and keep their operations up and running.

To sign up for volunteer shifts at the food bank, go to https://www.northvalleyfoodbank.org/ or reach out to Volunteer Coordinator Anya at anya@northvalleyfoodbank.org