Information about Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School: hies.org or 404-255-4026.
Homecoming week brings a variety of activities to Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School in Sandy Springs. One of them involves letting the entire high school population - 520 students - out of school for the day. While being away from the routine of classes sounds intriguing, what those students do with their time away is, in many ways, more rigorous than a midterm exam.
The school on Sept. 22 hosted its fourth Great Day of Service, a bi-annual event that unleashes the energy of the high school’s teens and applies it to a variety of projects around the metro area. Instead of conjugating French verbs or deciphering calculus problems the students apply their physical and mental abilities to building gardening pots, mentoring foster children, helping out on a farm, cleaning up an historic cemetery and packing up meals for homebound citizens. The late September event included 14 sites where students were assigned to pitch in to make a difference.
“We brought this idea back four years ago because service is one of the four pillars of our mission statement,” said Terry Kelly, the school’s 12th grade dean and director of community service. “We felt this was a great way for our kids to live that out, connect with and give back to the greater Atlanta community and to create libeling connections.”
At the same time, the event aims to promote class unity, said Kelly. “It’s always on the Tuesday of homecoming week so we can use the energy of homecoming to go into the community where as many kids as possible from the same class are together.”
The latest service day sent students to Hands On Atlanta, the Atlanta Veterans Farmers’ market, the Furkids animal shelter, South-View cemetery, the Atlanta Community Food Bank, the Dunwoody Nature Center and sustainable community gardens in the West End. Students started the day with a school assembly, and after picking up brown-bag lunches, they boarded buses for the various locations at 9 a.m.
“We have a community service board of students that helps identify the locations, then we let the students know well in advance where they’re going,” said Kelly. “They can also look at the website and learn about the organization. So you may think that nature is part of who you are, but when you get there, you might realize you don’t connect with it at all. On the other hand, someone may work on a trail restoration by the river and find their passion there.”
This year’s fall service day had a new twist: Students were required to write reflective papers about their experiences. “They could also write a thank-you letter that mentioned some of the things they learned or the impact they felt they made,” said Kelly. “What we really wanted was for them to create a personal connection with the day.”
Senior Emma Rolader used the day to reinforce a connection she’d already established with Books for Africa, a nonprofit that collects and ships books to schools on that continent.
“It’s just happened that I’ve gotten to do that for the last four years,” said the 17-year-old. “The program director and the people there recognized me; that says something about the relationships we form as well as work we do. Sorting and boxing textbooks sounds monotonous, but it’s not. I even found two books I want to read.
Rolader admitted that she heard some moaning about the service falling in the middle of homecoming celebrations. “But for me, it was a great experience to do something here in Atlanta that’s helping across the world. I really didn’t grasp that until last year, and it really resonated with me this time.”
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