Students give back to the community

By MICHELLE MILLER
Staff Writer

Seventh-grade students at Cooperstown Middle School participated in a day of community service last Thursday.

Students were taken to a variety of locations such as Glimmerglass State Park, the cemetery in Fly Creek, The Fly Creek Historical Association building and the Clark Sports Center for a hands-on opportunity to work together and help out their community.

Students also served as teacher’s helpers at the elementary school, provided landscaping duties at the district’s Memory Garden and Nature Center and helped the custodial staff with outside grounds maintenance at the middle/high school.

``Students often hear of giving back and helping out, but might not know of a specific way they could make this happen, or even believe they could make a difference,’’ said seventh-grade math teacher Deborah Miller.

``Community Service Day not only enables them to help for a day, but also gives them some concrete ways to go out and make a difference as a young person.

Miller said many of the sites, such as the Clark Sports Center adventure trails are places the students utilize themselves.

``Now they have a chance to return some sweat equity and hopefully become more inspired to care for these places in their community,’’ she said.

Seventh-grade social studies teacher John Brotherton said having students perform community service originated as part of the seventh grade theme years ago. He said he feels the day serves as a break from a normal school-day.

``It gets students out of school,’’ he said. ``The outside world becomes a classroom for a day.’’

Brotherton said the event also gives students an idea of what it is like to help others without getting some sort of compensation for it.

Brotherton took a group of students to help clean up, maintain and close the Glimmerglass State Park for winter. He said it was good for the students to get to see the difference they made once their hard work was finished.

``They could look at the trails and see what a difference they made,’’ he said.

Seventh-grader Dylan Snyder said he liked getting out of the classroom and getting out into the community.

``It was good knowing we were doing something good and were helping out other people,’’ he said.

Snyder said he is no stranger to performing community service however.

He said he usually helps out with his church and with other various activities in the village.

Snyder said he and his family go to Glimmerglass State Park quite often and it felt nice to volunteer there because it is a ``really nice place.’’

The seventh-grader said he volunteered at Hyde Hall over the summer. Snyder said he helped with a kids program called ``It’s a Play Date,’’ and helped give tours of the historic building.

Snyder said he enjoyed reading, playing games, and taking the kids to the park to swim and play in the sand.

Seventh-grader Robert Iversen said the most important thing he learned from the experience was how important it is to give back to one’s own community.

``I guess I already kind of knew that though,’’ said Iversen, who said he learned this from being a boy scout. ``I helped out at Glimmerglass once before.’’

Iversen said while working on the trails he and some other students came across some clay that they gathered and brought back to school for art class. The art teacher will fire it and tell us what kind it is, said Iversen.

Iversen said the trail maintenance was a lot of hard work.

``We had to wear workgloves or else we would have had blisters,’’ he said. ``It involved a lot of raking and shoveling.’’

The day was also a lot of fun, said Iversen. The seventh-grader said he and other students were allowed to rake up leaves and jump into them.

``I love helping others especially when you get to be in a place as beautiful as Glimmerglass,’’ said Iversen. ``It was something different than just going to school,’’ he added.

Seventh-grader Jeremiah Darr said his favorite part about helping clean the trails was getting to run the leaf blower.

He said he also found it interesting when he and some other students came across some baby turtles. At first we thought the turtles were dead, but they were not, said Darr. According to Darr, he and some of his classmates were able to take some of the turtles home. He said his are in his mom’s room. Darr said the cleanup was a lot of hard work, but a lot of fun at the same time.

``I just do not want to be shovel boy again,’’ said Darr. The seventh-grader said his muscles hurt after all the shoveling he had to do.

The students worked under the supervision of seventh-grade teachers Deborah Miller, Amy Parr, John Brotherton and Micaiah Abts.

Text Only