News
Middle School Community Service
The Bolles School's community service efforts are School-wide, with students in the lower, middle, and upper schools contributing a large amount of time and energy to support important causes. Middle school students on the Bartram Campus provided a fair share of the cumulative service at Bolles during the 2008-09 school year.
The middles school students participated in several campus and School-wide projects. The Bartram Campus participated in the Woodland Acres Food Drive, collecting non-perishable food and money for financially disadvantaged families' Thanksgiving baskets. The money collected purchased turkeys and Winn Dixie gift cards. A group of 20 middle school students helped deliver the food to Woodland Acres Elementary school and sort it for the families, then stayed to help out in classrooms.
The Bartram Campus helped needy families of military veterans by raising money and collecting clothes during the holiday season. Cash donations, toys and new clothes were collected by the students and delivered to the families along with holiday food baskets. The middle school adopted four separate families with a total of 11 children.
The middle school also hosted Bartram Pink and Denim Day, raising over $2,000 for the Susan G. Komen For The Cure Foundation; Jackie Witt Day, raising over $5,000 for the Witt Family Education Fund; and Cystic Fibrosis Spread the Love Week, raising over $3,000 for this cause.
Several individual clubs and groups on the Bartram Campus held various service projects as well:
The Environmental Club added paper recycling to the plastic bottle recycling program that they were already running. Students maintained recycling stations around the campus and emptied those stations weekly, taking the materials to be recycled to the designated dumpster for pickup. The students in the club spent part of their free time each week on these collections. The club also made a donation to the St. John's Riverkeepers and sponsored a used cell phone recycling drive during the year.
The Culinary Club was made up of 15 seventh grade girls who participated in baking homemade goodies to help raise money for numerous service projects held on The Bartram Campus. Some of the groups that benefited from the Culinary Club's efforts were the Jackie Witt Foundation, The Ronald McDonald House, and The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
The Middle School Dance Team participated in a performance at the Duval County Special Olympics in February 2009. They danced in the opening ceremonies and cheered for the athletes.
The eighth grade class conducted a “donate a dollar” campaign for Red Cross Disaster Relief. The money was collected in the English classes and $200 was donated to this fund. The eighth grade also sponsored a child as part of the Dreams Come True program. Throughout the year the students raised $1,000 through various projects to go to the dream of a child. A luncheon was held in the child's honor on May 23 in the cafeteria.
The seventh grade class raised over $2,000 by selling donuts and sponsoring a dress down day. Also the class sponsored “Undie Monday” to collect new underwear for financially disadvantaged children.
The sixth grade class raised over $2,000 in baked goods and soda sales for the Ronald McDonald House.
Visual Art students painted 50 pots that were auctioned off for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation's Kick Off to a Cure held at Jacksonville Municipal Stadium. The students raised $1,800 for this event.
The Making the Turn Club organized the middle school contribution to “The Bulldog Ton,” a school-wide effort to donate over a ton of food to help wipe out childhood hunger in Northeast Florida. The food was donated to the Second Harvest Food bank.
Future Game Designer Club members Gray Houston and Philip Kenney created a video game for the St. John's Riverkeepers that will be uploaded to their website for educational purposes.
In December and January, the Animal Lovers Club held its annual collection for Pet Rescue North Inc., a small non-profit rescue shelter on the north side of Jacksonville. They collected general supplies (paper towels, cleaning supplies, garbage bags, rubber gloves etc.), dog and cat food/treats, dog and cat supplies (litter, leashes, collars, beds, cages, or crates), dog and cat toys as well as cash donations and gift cards. In total they collected approximately $400 worth of items and $200 in cash and gift cards. When the club delivered the supplies, they were shocked to find that the shelter was down to only a few bags of food. The director of the shelter wrote the following to the members of the club in a thank-you letter: “Pet Rescue North is absolutely overwhelmed with the donations you collected for our organization. We have never had so many donations from one group before! You certainly have far exceeded anything we could have imagined.”
Members of the Youth Against Cancer club helped raise money for the American Cancer Society. The club raised approximately $2,000 for the cause through baked goods and soda sales and through participating in Relay for Life.
Service is a key component of the Bolles experience and students on the Middle School Bartram Campus are clearly embracing this important aspect. The strong tradition of service on the campus continued in the 2008-09 school year and the expectations remain high for future efforts from middle school students.