Hiatt Middle School: Learn to Serve and Serve to Learn
From planting gardens to painting murals to removing, Service Day at Hiatt Middle School was all about improving the school and neighborhood.
Across E. 15th Street from Hiatt Middle School Friday morning was the state’s largest school district condensed into a plot of tilled, fertile soil on what used to be a vacant lot. In recent years it’s become a community garden and Friday, the school’s annual Service Day, was planting day. With plastic bags over their shoes as they worked in the black, mucky ground, seedling students planted crops that will end up on neighborhood tables before this school year gives way to the next.
Viva East Bank has partnered with Des Moines Public Schools for two years to host Service Day at Hiatt. A coalition of the school district, residents and community partners are working together to revitalize three Des Moines neighborhoods: Capitol East, Capitol Park and MLK Park.
“Today’s a wonderful opportunity for students to feel ownership in their school and community,” said Hiatt principal Debbie Chapman. “They are able to look at the gardens and improvements and know they had something to do with it. The best way to build a neighborhood up is to build up neighborhood pride.”
The garden has grown in more ways than the obvious one. Eagle Scout projects have added a stand of apple trees. Hy-Vee surrounded it with a fence and provided a tool shed. Speaking of tools, one of the kids was so hard at work he broke a hoe. There were plenty more where that one came from.
The garden was a focal point but hardly the only form of service being rendered.
Flowers were also going into the ground outside the school’s main entrance. Art classes were painting crop markers. Other classroom time was devoted to writing thank you cards for relay to military troops stationed overseas. Hygiene kits were assembled that social agencies will distribute to the homeless. Litter was collected to be recycled into the letters D-R-E-A-M, a public art piece that will be on display at the busy corner of E. 14th & University.
In the midst of it all Community Youth Concepts was holding a series of pep talk assemblies, one for each grade level, 6-8, to get all hands in the mood of volunteerism. Not that much encouragement was required. Morale was already high since everybody was out of the usual dress code uniform as a reward for hitting achievement benchmarks on the recent Iowa Assessments.
“One of the most remarkable features of service day is the true sense of community it fosters. To see this day come to life and the impact it leaves on the community is truly amazing,” said Jill Padgett, Community Schools Site Coordinator at East High School.
The service day is the first of several other community events planned throughout the summer, including a wellness fair, National Night Out and a baseball reunion.
By the time those all happen the garden will be giving back.
Melissa Boyer-Sunga is mostly a 7th grade math teacher at Hiatt but Friday morning she was doing a great impression of a farmer as she oversaw the sowing of the school’s vegetable plot. The crop portfolio has evolved to better serve the tastes of the people who reap the harvest.
“We’re planting bok choy now,”she said (an Asian cabbage), “and tomatillos (a green tomato that’s a staple of Mexican cooking), too. Like other vegetables they’re really delicious when they’re homegrown.”
If they should have more surplus come August than folks can eat maybe another event can be added to the neighborhood calendar. There’s a village in Spain that holds a festival every summer called La Tomatina. Everyone gathers in the town square for a big tomato fight.
Just a suggestion.
