BY JENNIFER AMATO
Staff Writer
North Brunswick NORTH BRUNSWICK – Twelve middle school students are ready to “pace” themselves and help senior citizens in the township learn how to use the computer.
As part of The PACES Project (Partnership for Advancing Character Education through Service learning), eighth-graders at Linwood Middle School will volunteer their time to help those unfamiliar with computer operations learn how to send e-mail, use a digital camera and forward pictures, scan documents and photos, maintain a simple Web page, and shop safely on the Internet.
“When we first started talking about this, we looked at the community and saw where opportunities [are] for community service. We’re very close to the senior locations. We have the senior center right here and [the senior housing building, 740 Hermann Road] over there,” Marj Spangler said.
Along with fellow staff members Kathy Dounelis, Carolyn Forney, Laurie Currier and Sally Neal, the team established LIONS, or Linwood Intergenerational Outreach for North Brunswick Seniors, which is also the mascot of the school.
“Our hope is to broaden [the seniors’] horizons. Once they learn how to surf the Web they can do a virtual tour of the Museum of Modern Art or watch concerts, [because] getting out and about may be difficult for them,” Spangler said.
“Many of them have friends who live far away or don’t get to see their kids or grandkids right away,” Dounelis added. “If they learn how to communicate through e-mail and pictures, they can share their lives a little more. They can set up a site with photo albums … or put pictures on a family Web page. … They can kind of leave something for the younger members of their families and share their memories.”
The benefit of utilizing a service learning project instead of just community service is because service learning relates to subjects the children are studying and provides real-life correlations. In effect, the children benefit greatly because they can connect schoolwork to the world surrounding them. For example, instead of solely donating food to a food bank, a science class can study the effects of global weather patterns on drought conditions, history classes can study world hunger, and health classes can study nutritional information, according to Dounelis and Spangler.
“It is community service with a curricular component,” Spangler said. “The kids can really see the purpose of learning this stuff, connecting it to the real world.”
Another important aspect of the project is teaching students how to be effective, and showing youths a world before video games, color televisions and remote controls.
“The computer is so alien to many seniors, but it is as common as a piece of paper to the kids. This is just a way to bridge the gap,” Dounelis said. “This lets kids see senior citizens in a different light. … I think it’s good for them to understand that [when] people are 70, 80, 90 or 100, they are still human beings and they have things to share and there is a lot to learn from them.”
In another service learning project completed this year, ESL (English as a second language) students studying similes in their language arts classes made Valentine’s Day cards for the township’s Meals on Wheels recipients. They decorated their greeting cards with phrases such as “Friendship is like water in the desert” or “Friendship is like a box of chocolates: everyone is different but you like them all”.
Next year, the teachers hope the students will be interested in collating a living history or biography of the seniors, interviewing Holocaust survivors and speaking with veterans.
“It has such great potential,” Spangler said of service learning.
“This gives [students] the opportunity to feel they belong somewhere and be part of a family, be it a school family or a family in the community around them,” Dounelis added.
Any senior citizens interested in participating with Surfing for Seniors can contact the middle school at (732) 289-3602.
The PACES Project is a collaborative effort of the New Jersey Learn and Serve America Program, the New Jersey Department of State, the New Jersey Department of Education and the New Jersey Center for Character Education at Rutgers University. The program has developed six mentor schools that have extended their services to incorporate other communities into the service learning project. Linwood Middle School is currently receiving the assistance of Iselin Middle School, and hopes that by next year it can become qualified enough to mentor other schools in the area.