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Combining Different Missions: Three Days of Service at VUHS

photo provided Presenting a check for $3,000.00 to Porter Hospital President James L. Daily are VUHS Seniors Sarah Bissonette and Kate Housekeeper.

photo provided Gathered in numbers and in spirit, the VUHS Class of 2009 pauses at the Star Mill Complex on their path to Porter Hospital during their 18 mile walk-a-thon.

Tuesday October 14, 2008

By Cookie Steponaitis

    Every year, testing of large percentages of students in each high school in the state must be accomplished. Last year, VUHS looked at those testing days through a very different lens, and decided on a new approach. For three days in October and again in May, parts of the school community are committed to diligently taking state and national tests, performing at their personal best. While three hundred students test, the other four hundred set out on a three day odyssey of a different sort. The Freshman Class spent two mornings in the community raking, clipping, stacking, chopping, organizing and performing tasks for city, non-profit and religious organizations. On the third day they visited Champlain College, the University of Vermont and St. Michael’s College exploring possibilities and beginning the process of seeing themselves reaching for goals past high school. The Sophomore Class completed both testing, one day of community service and one day of college visits. The juniors were testing the whole three days. The senior class took the lead in a new project that brought together the reality of cancer, the devastating effect the disease has on people in Vermont and the fact that teens can mobilize to make a difference about it. The Class of 2009 collected sponsors and walked a total of 18 miles from Vergennes to Porter Hospital in order to make a donation to the Cancer Screening and Prevention Program for Addison County people. Porter Hospital President James L. Daily accepted the donation on behalf of the hospital.

    Principal Ed Webbley commented on the three day experience, “I can barely assemble the language to convey my appreciation for the job done by students and staff over the past three days of testing. Awe-inspiring comes close. So does amazing.

   The idea behind the three days grew from the realization that the juniors were doing our community a real service by taking the NECAP testing seriously. So how could we encourage the entire school to come together as a community? The answer to that question was demonstrated over the past three days as the seniors raised $5000 for cancer, the juniors embraced their learning through testing, the sophomores challenged themselves to find out more about their academic and career futures by taking the PLAN test (and by doing community service), and the freshmen participated in community service and visited colleges. Therefore, instead of business as usual, we have embraced our mission of sending more students onto further education, strengthened our class identities, reached out to the communities who so generously provide us with great schools, raised money and awareness for fighting a disease that has darkened the lives of so many of our neighbors, tested our learning, and perhaps most important, we have embraced these challenges with communal joy.”

     A venture of this magnitude requires the time and talent of every teacher, staff member, bus driver, custodian and community outreach as well. The coordination of busses alone is a staggering task. Many groups walk to sites, but many are bussed to the five towns that make up the Addison Northwest Supervisory Union District and to the colleges in Burlington. Students are divided up into the Morning Meeting groups and accompanied on their projects by their teachers. Student comments on the days ranged from,” It was exhilarating, I was excited to be a part of something so giant and amazing as our walk was, our class really came together to so something for people touched by cancer to I learned so much for other people’s stories.” Additional support was provided by community donations including those from Aubuchon Hardware, Shaw’s, Kinney Drugs, and many individual businesses that sponsored students and made donations toward the cause of Cancer testing and prevention.

    As VUHS looks toward May’s testing and more community work, there is a determined goal of focusing between having students give their best on tests, giving back to the community in tangible ways and students exploring possibilities and future goals on college campuses. The immediate benefits of these programs may be difficult to see and some will not take root until later in life, but the goals are clear. As Marjorie Moore reflected in October of 2006, “Volunteering is the ultimate exercise in democracy. You vote in elections once a year, but when you volunteer, you vote every day about the kind of community you want to live in.”

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