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Service Learning

Service-Learning

The students of SHC animate the message of our founders through acts of justice, charity, prayer, community-building and reflection in and out of the classroom. Our service-learning program integrates curriculum-based community outreach and direct service at all grade levels. Service learning develops academically prepared leaders who understand how to be effective agents of change in a complicated world. Through service learning, our students critically reflect on the Gospel values of compassion, solidarity, and the giving of self. Because Christian service is at the core of SHC’s mission, we do not limit service to a prescribed number of hours. Learn more about service-learning at SHC.

For more information, please contact the Service Learning Coordinator Mr. Evan Vaughn.

Curriculum

Ninth Grade: You Can Make a Difference

Ninth grade math students learn about the importance of nutrition, unpack how to read food labels, and examine data about food insecurity in our local community. In conjunction with our schoolwide almsgiving during the Lenten Season, this knowledge allows ninth graders to educate the SHC community about nutrition and food insecurity. They spearhead a canned food drive to assist St. Teresa’s Pantry. All ninth grade math classes also participate in reflection and prayer for all of those who rely on charity and public assistance programs to supplement their monthly food budgets. The ninth graders collect, sort, and deliver the food collected in the drive, learning themselves and serving their neighbors.

Tenth Grade: Understanding Community

Using novels, short stories, essays and poetry as points of access, all sophomore students participate in a full-day service learning immersion experience at St. Anthony’s Foundation, a nonprofit agency in the Tenderloin. Students explore literary and personal experiences of poverty, racism, addictive illness, psychological illness, and faith as they serve others. They are challenged to stand in solidarity with the guests at St. Anthony’s, where thousands have stood before, and to learn first-hand about local politics and history as they “walk the walk” of the changing Tenderloin. All participants are asked to follow the example of Mother Teresa, to look in the face of each person and see the face of God. The teachers and students reflect on their own experiences and on the Church’s tenets of social justice through creative and non-fiction writing about a neighborhood so close and yet seemingly so distant from our own.

Eleventh Grade: Good News in the City

Our beloved founders call our students to be young women and men for others. Good News in the City requires students to live the gospel message in simple, powerful and profound ways. In their junior year, all students are asked to commit to a minimum of 10 hours of service responding directly to needs in their neighborhood and/or in the larger global community. Ideally, students engage with communities and with projects that allow them to utilize their target language skills. Time is designated throughout the semester in eleventh grade ASL, French, Japanese, Mandarin, and Spanish classes to reflect on and present these service experiences through written, oral, cultural and spiritual expression.

Twelfth Grade: Leave to Serve

“Leave to Serve,” the culmination of our four-year service learning program, requires seniors to work collectively to use their beauty and brilliance for the global common good. Working with their instructors in Civics and Economics, seniors learn about global resource inequities and innovative solutions such as micro-financing. With instructors in AP US Government, students explore issues of social justice at a structural level; they practice civic dialogue as they work together to respond to a global environmental, economic, political and/or social issue of their choice. Individually or in groups, seniors in Civics/Econ create business plans whose profit is invested through Kiva.org, "a non-profit organization with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty." Prayer is the foundation of this experience, as all students are called to live what Margaret Mead proclaimed, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Innovative Catholic Preparatory High School Serving San Mateo County

Located in the

Heart of the city

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