May 2, 2004

Looking to adopt a project
St. Stephens School takes on community service

By Carol Rosen
Editor

St. Stephens School, located in Blossom Valley but teaching students from the Willow Glen and Cambrian Park neighborhoods among others, is teaching its students to be kind, tolerant and to take care of others. The school has a strategic plan that begins teaching about community service with the second grade.

“Community service is expected, but not mandatory. By the time our students reach middle school, the service has become part of their belief system and many have a real desire to help their community,” said Paul Wenninger, principal at the school.

On a recent Saturday morning, for example, fourth grader Adrian Hinojosa joined his brother Marco and two other seventh graders, Trevor Owen and Frankie Richardson. The four could have been home watching cartoons, playing video games or just sleeping in, but instead they were in the Cambrian Park area to help with the city’s Great American Litter pickup. Scampering down rocky slopes by the Guadalupe River, the four boys were picking up all the trash, and doing it in areas where most of the adult contingent refused to go.

The students typically want to do more to benefit the community, Wenninger says. By the time they reach middle school, we ask them to help out a certain number of hours. Most of our kids are way over the hourly requirement, he added. Part of the reason the school started the program has to do with the age bracket.

“They [the children] are getting ready to go to high school and will be leaving their families soon. They have a limited time to spend with their family. If they serve the community, they are doing projects with their parents. They are enjoying doing adult work with their parents.”

The students are looking for a project to adopt, he adds. They got the idea from the freeways where certain groups adopt a stretch of highway. Currently they do community service weekly during their lunch periods at the Santa Maria Urban Mission and St. Julies Catholic Church. But the “students and their parents are looking for something to adopt, a project or area that will become part of our curriculum.”

The school, parents and students are looking into various ways they can help support their various communities. Among their ideas are picking up trash along streets and highways, working at soup kitchens and stacking and reading books.

One aspect of the service ideas is the fact that the kids themselves are opening up new activities. “This is a sincere outreach program, the students are learning values,” concluded Wenninger.