NEW PALESTINE — Sitting at computers inside Jeremy Large’s Service Learning class at New Palestine High School (NPHS), the seniors that filled the room were busy, immersed in ironing out projects they’ve created to help others. This is the eighth consecutive year that Large has tasked his students with coming up with community-based projects which, in turn, help them develop real, work-based learning skills.
Students taking the service learning class break into small groups at the beginning of the school year and then brainstorm to come up with a project. Followed by a “Pitch Day” where the students share their ideas with school administrators, teachers and fellow classmates, it’s then time to get the project rolling.
“It’s all about logistics, planning and then implementing the projects,” Large said.
The projects are all creative — some designed to reach other students and the community while others are raising funds for good causes around the county and state for such places as The Hope House, The Hope Center and Riley Hospital for Children.
Camille Massari and Vivian Hart are working on a project called “Mental Health Matters.” Their goal is to help bring student mental health to the forefront and get students who are having issues the help they need.
“We’re focusing on general advocacy for mental health, showing resources within our school and community,” Vivian said. “We’re doing a lot of activism through social media as well as talking to our school’s social worker and counselors for ways we can help connect the students.”
They’re also promoting the school’s newer “Bring Change 2 Mind” club, which focuses on mental health and breaking the stigma.
Camille, whose mother is a social worker, noted as a student she and other kids just don’t really know there are counselors at school to help them with mental health issues causing many students to suffer in silence.
“I feel like a lot of students don’t know about the help that is here,” Camille said. “Mental health issues, they get pushed aside.”
Matthew Everett and Cameron Mann are both planning on being engineers and love STEM-based learning. Their project is called, “STEM Guardian.” They plan to head to the district’s other schools and present STEM-based programs to younger students.
“We’ll be talking about the different STEM-based fields and careers,” Matthew said. “STEM can be kind of a scary thing for some kids.”
They’ll bring kits and share lessons so younger students can see what STEM-related projects are all about. In order to be able to do that, they had to meet with the district’s head of curriculum, Miles Hercamp, to share their idea as well as take his feedback.
They’ve also created something called “Project Adam,” a nationwide initiative that has saved the lives of children, adolescents and adults who went into sudden cardiac arrest.
“We want all New Palestine schools to be ‘Heart Safe’ schools,” Cameron said. “That means having the right amount of defibrillators within a certain distance so people can be helped.”
Seniors Sydney Oliver and Audra Bloomer are working on two projects to raise money for the Hope House and Riley Hospital for Children. In late November, they plan to set up Christmas Trees with tags at each of the district schools, giving each school a chance to donate to the Hope House through donations with the needs written on the tags.
“All the donations will then be delivered to us and we’ll take everything to the Hope House,” Sydney said.
They’re also going to help promote and support the “Haunted Halls” fundraiser at New Palestine Junior High School in October benefiting Riley.
“This used to be the old Haunted Trails that kind of died out when students switched schools, but we’re supporting their effort to bring it back to benefit Riley where they’ve been a “Red Wagon” school for years,” Audra said. “We want to help continue that tradition.”
They’re making T-shirts and flyers to promote “Haunted Halls” and say both projects have taught them a lot.
“I honestly wasn’t sure what this class was about but when we got here and started learning about these projects, we both decided they are lots of fun,” Audra said.
Some of the other class projects include the creation of a social media page on the former Twitter, now X, site by students Nick Barada and Brady Armstrong called NewPalTV, promoting everything going on inside the high school. Jocelynn Flagle, Isabella Brownfield and Cara Payton are hosting a fundraiser on Dec. 8 during a basketball game to raise money for the Hope Center Indy, which provides help for victims of sex trafficking. They’re partnering with Kenzie Kleiman and Vivian Miller who are doing a fundraiser during football homecoming week to help NPHS become a Riley Red Wagon school.
Large noted there were two students, Madison Stone and Ellie Strong, who were not in class Friday to discuss their project because they were out sharing it at New Palestine Elementary School. Their project centers around the performing arts and things like why music is important and how good it is.
“They’ve already done a couple of different presentations and we are really proud of them,” Large said.
When Large first came up with the idea of getting students involved with service learning projects he wanted to educate them on the importance of looking outside of the classroom and their own inner circle to learn about reaching out to the community and business.
Some of the projects include volunteer work with the projects lasting throughout the school year.
“We have these initiatives now where we need to try and get students as much hands-on learning as possible, and this class does that,” Large said. “The class provides them an opportunity to make a difference, which is hard because all of these students take part in extracurricular activities and don’t have a lot of spare time.”
