|
PRESCHOOL
- Helped collect pennies with the Lower School for the Common Cents penny drive to support children’s programs throughout the city.
- Collected mittens, gloves, and hats for a Mitten Tree which were given to people from CHIPS and St. Johns Family Place Family Center shelter.
- Baked and delivered deserts to the Brooklyn Heights Synagogue women’s overnight shelter.
- Collected gently used books for public school children through Project Cicero and PS 307.
LOWER SCHOOL
Kindergarten
-
Helped collect money for both the UNICEF and Common Cents penny drives.
-
Made and sent holiday cards to homebound seniors who receive meals through City Meals-on-Wheels.
- Made cards for people with mental illness at a community center called Saville Projects.
-
Participated in a scholastic program called “Classrooms Care”. As K children read books in their classrooms, they kept track of how many books they read on a poster that they sent to Scholastic when they reached a total of 100 books read. Scholastic then sent 100 books to a school that is in need of books.
1st Graders:
-
Coordinated the LS UNICEF drive and raised $969.
- Helped collect money for the Common Cents penny drive and toys for the annual toy drive.
2nd Graders:
-
Baked deserts monthly for the Community Dinner at Schermerhorn Street. Recruited families to work at the Dinner.
- Led the LS and PS Penny Harvest with Common Cents and raised $2,286 to benefit children's programs throughout the city. As part of the Common Cents program, the second grade will receive a $1,000 grant to determine, in a roundtable discussion, which neighborhood groups would be the recipient of the funds.
- Helped collect money for UNICEF and toys for the annual toy drive.
3rd and 4th Graders: Helped collect money for both the UNICEF and Common Cents penny drives and participated in the toy drive.
3rd Graders:
- With the guidance of Assistant Teacher Julia Haas-Godsil, who lived in New Orleans, the 3rd graders learned about Hurricane Katrina and what happened to New Orleans after the storm. The students wanted to help. With the help of Peter Labonte, a BFS parent, who is involved with the New Orleans City Council, ties were established with the Dryades Charter School in New Orleans, located in the 3rd ward. Our BFS third graders became pen pals with Ms. Marcel's third grade classroom and greatly enjoyed learning more about each other's lives and exchanging letters. The third grade then spearheaded a lower school community service project and held a bake sale, raising $1,100. The money will go towards school supplies for Ms. Marcel's class.
4th Graders:
- Conducted a division-wide read-a-thon to raise funding for a national non profit dedicated to clean water projects in developing countries called Water First. $8,328 was raised. This project tied in nicely to the 4th grade curriculum since they study water in their 3rd quarter.
MIDDLE SCHOOL
5th Graders:
-
Students made two visits to the Cobble Hill Health Center, a senior center and residency. Children sang on their first visit and made valentine cards with the seniors. They recited poetry on their second visit.
6th Graders:
-
Co-led (with the PTA community service committee) the school wide gift drive for the St. John’s Family Center in Crown Heights and Mercy First, a foster care center that supports children throughout the city. Approximately 20 bags of toys were collected.
- All classes made two visits to the children at St. John's Place Family Center, a day care program in Crown Heights serving neighborhood families and homeless families temporarily living at their residences, where they played and read to the children.
7th Graders:
-
Led a division wide read-a-thon to benefit the Kisangura Friends Primary School in Mugumu, Tanzania. More than $3,800 was raised and many, many books will be purchased with this money.
8th Graders:
-
Forty-five 8th graders visited PS 307 twice in Vinegar Hill where students read to children from kindergarten and first grade.
- 8A held a bake sale and raised $470 to help a Kisangura (Tanzania) Friends School family keep their house.
7th and 8th graders:
-
Advisories sponsored Letters for Change tables about different topics selected by the students. The advisories researched the topic, created a table-top presentation describing the issue, and then wrote letters for other students to sign. Other topics included sweatshop labor, health care reform, more bike lanes in Brooklyn, global warming, replacing gas-only powered buses and cabs with hybrids.
The Middle School Student Government:
-
Sent their $300 profit from the annual Halloween party to the NY Quarterly Meeting's African Education Committee, which supports the orphans at the Kisangura Friends School in Tanzania.
- Collected $200 at the annual Halloween party which went to a family in Kisangura, Tanzania.
Entire Middle School:
-
Recycling clubs recycled BFS paper on Fridays and the club initiated a new recycling initiative whereby plastic yogurt containers were collected to be reused.
UPPER SCHOOL
-
9th & 10th Grade students were required to complete a minimum 50 hours of SERVICE in total over these two years before matriculating to the 11th Grade.
-
11th & 12th Grade students are required to complete a minimum of 50 hours in CREATIVITY, a minimum 50 hours in ACTION and a minimum 50 hours in SERVICE, totaling a 150 hours of CAS work over two years in order to graduate from Brooklyn Friends School.
- In the first year of the new CAS program 11th graders began to work on a variety of local, national and international projects. For example, Ibrahim Shaw and Louise Williams with, the support of Head of School Roxanne Zazzaro, began a school supplies campaign for a rural Peruvian school they spent time at last spring; Alexandra Marquis will travel to the Island of St.Lucia this summer to intern with the Minister of Agriculture on a variety of development initiatives; Margot Lowery began a public health internship with "Share the Care," a Manhattan-based organization studying secondary care-givers; Jackson Watts spent the year coaching middle school students here at Brooklyn Friends in the cello as well as at a local public school in the cello. From student government to school productions to athletics, these are just a few examples of CAS pursuits by our 11th graders.
-
The Upper School Chorus went to the St. Charles Jubilee Center, a senior center, to sing.
-
With the leadership of Jenine Abbassi, the senate subcommittee (Community Outreach) sponsored a canned food drive. City Harvest picked up approximately 1,500 canned goods from BFS. The US discussed the importance of food drives and emphasized that many people benefit from the food collected through City Harvest including people who are homeless as well as hard working people who don't make enough money for rent, food, etc.
-
9th graders went on an overnight trip to the Youth Service Opportunities Project (YSOP) at Friends Seminary to work in soup kitchens and homeless shelters run through YSOP's partnerships with various organizations working for the Homeless.
-
The 11th grade set a new record for packaging food kits at Philabundance, a large Philadelphia-based non-profit, during a college tour to Philadelphia.
- Upper school students did several thousand hours of service at over a hundred different organizations locally, nationally and internationally. Many students were involved in relief and reconstruction work, several participated in marches and walks for a range of causes, and other students continued a long history of volunteering at local hospitals, parks, and social service agencies. Several US student-led community service activities took place. 12th graders, Ashley Gitter and Nicholas Goode, led an in-school AIDS awareness campaign, which including a very powerful collection, where students participated in a red-ribbon ceremony. US students, led by juniors Lily Stampfel and Rachel Auster-Rosen, mobilized an US troupe to participate in the NYC Annual AIDs Walk. 10th graders, Maqueda Sylvan, Asha Boston and Kaveise Cadogan, organized a spring clothing drive, resulting in the first-ever Brooklyn Friends Upper School fashion show. Brittany Fuller organized the Brooklyn/Staten Island Blood Drive for the 3rd year with the help of the CS Director, Carla Precht, and Abby Fuchsman worked with the CS PAT Committee in collecting over 20 boxes of gently-used books for Project Cicero and PS 307. US students also were found selling ribbons to raise donations for the fight against Breast Cancer. US students ALSO provided supporting roles in the PAT's annual Family Service Day and LS Diversity Goes to the Movies Day.
PAT Community Service Committee:
-
Created and distributed a family CS volunteer flyer with opportunities during the holiday season.
-
Conducted a schoolwide event called Freaky Fun day for over 200 families. All proceeds raised went to the scholarship fund at BFS. Parents also collected over 50 bags of almost-new clothes for children at the St. Johns family Center shelter and Mercy First. The Halloween festivities focused on fun of course and there were many activities that were organized to raise awareness about our environment and the need to recycle too.
-
Co -led the schoolwide toy drive with the 6th grade for the St. John’s Family Center children who are in foster care at Mercy First. Approximately 20 bags of toys were collected.
-
Brooklyn Friends School and Public School 307 in Vinegar Hill/Fort Greene joined forces in April on BFS' Family Day of Service to beautify the front yard of PS 307, make centerpieces of colorful tissue flowers for the Community Dinner, and create holiday cards for homebound seniors through City Meals on Wheels. All activities took place off site at PS 307 and lunch was donated by BFS. More than one hundred people from both communities came together for the very first time to work side by side to transform PS 307's 3 empty fifty-foot dirt-filled lots into bright colored gardens with bushes, trees, perennials, and of course annuals. Plants, tools, mulch and fertilizer were donated by citywide green organizations like Partnership for Parks, the custodian service that maintains the PS 307 school, and BFS. A few individuals from PS 307 also contributed.
|