Community Engagement - Holton-Arms School
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Community Engagement
At Holton, you’ll come to truly know your SELF so that you can best contribute to your COMMUNITY and make a vital impact on the WORLD.
We encourage students to use critical thinking skills to creatively solve problems. We cultivate curiosity, examine injustices, and leverage students' knowledge so that they can actively engage in their communities with empathy, courage, and shared responsibility. By applying classroom knowledge and content to meet authentic community needs, our students become knowledgeable, willing, and eager participants in our social fabric. We ask students to collaborate with communities for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity.
Creative and Critical Thinking
Local, National, and Global Engagement
Social Justice
Students can formulate questions to seek a clear understanding of a problem.
Students apply problem-solving processes to develop solutions to simple and complex problems.
Students build on others’ ideas and add new ideas of their own to innovate or solve problems.
Students research local, national, or global topics, issues, or events to generate significant questions.
Students examine multiple conditions and forces that affect local, national, and global topics, issues, and events.
Students can explain local, national, and global governmental processes.
Students reflect upon how they participate in local, national, and global systems.
Students recognize that power and privilege influence relationships and consider how they have been affected by those dynamics.
Students demonstrate humility, integrity, and a sense of shared responsibility regarding social justice.
Students examine the impact of their actions and promote equity, justice, sustainability, and peace.
Students account for the impact they have on creating an environmentally sustainable future.
Student Leadership
One of the most important aspects of the Community Engagement Program is that our students lead the way. To that end,
Student
Community Engagement Committees
exist in each division, and are responsible for assisting with a wide range of community engagement opportunities that occur throughout the year. These efforts include planning and implementing projects that address local issues, supporting community-based organizations’ efforts to promote equity and sustainability, and promoting a sense of shared responsibility both within the Holton community and beyond.
In the Upper School student leadership opportunities also include elected
grade-level representatives
responsible for sharing information at class meetings, bringing awareness to important community needs, and leading grade-level projects and club participation.
All Upper School students are required to complete
50 hours of community engagement for graduation
. The total number of hours must be completed before entering Senior year.
Please note, you may do more if you choose to.
50 Hours Breakdown
Grade 9 Hours - at least 10 hours to be completed before the start of 10th grade
10 hours to be completed before the start of 10th grade.
Students can start counting hours as early as summer after 8th grade.
Optional opportunities to get hours will be given to 9th grade students throughout the school year.
The 40 Hour Project
40 hours completed within one "theme"
At least 40 hours of these hours must be completed at organizations that fall under the same "theme," this is called
"The 40-Hour Project."
This project must have a theme and address a specific community need. All hours should be completed at organizations that fall within the theme. For example:
Theme: food insecurity
Organizations: Martha's Table, Nourish Now, DC Central Food Kitchen
These hours can be completed at any time throughout Upper School, but must be completed before the start of senior year.
All community engagement hours must be
direct engagement
with a population in
need
. A community in
need
addresses the gap between "what is" and "what should be." For example, all groups deserve a right to: safe housing, transportation, green space, education, healthcare, food, clean water, etc.
Direct engagement
is defined as students' interaction with the recipients of the project or the physical environment they have targeted for improvement. This differs from
indirect engagement
, channeling resources to a need. For example, serving the homeless at a soup kitchen (direct) versus holding a canned food drive for a local food pantry (indirect). Therefore, drives, fundraisers, 5k's, etc. will not count towards the graduation requirement.
Experiential Learning Opportunities
Student Leadership & Opportunities
Partnerships
The Jillian and Lindsay Wiener
Community Engagement Learning Opportunities
9th-12th grades.
10th Grade MELO on Civic Engagement (Mock Trial)
LS - Helen Poon Community Engagement Fair
MS - Close Up Community Impact & Civil Leadership Symposium
US - Leadership Summit & UPenn Social Innovators
Rock Creek Conservancy, NIH Children’s Inn, The Dwelling Place, Project Linus, Bikes for the World, Edlavitch D.C. Jewish Community Center, Community Reach of Montgomery County, Only Make Believe, A Wider Circle, Jump Rope for Heart, Little Falls Watershed, Martha’s Table, Kind Works, Brightview Senior Living, Nourish