GREENFIELD — Students at Vista Verde Middle School recently spent part of their summer learning about adoption and foster care through a three-week enrichment program, during which they created projects to benefit local families and children.
Teacher Matt Garcia designed the class with one goal in mind: Get his students interested in community service.
“The idea of combining project-based learning with work that would benefit people outside of school was our goal for the summer,” he said.
Garcia partnered with the Kinship Center, a nonprofit child welfare agency in Salinas, to develop the curriculum centered around the foster care system, the situations that children face when being placed into foster care and the overall process of adoption. The class, made up of 21 students entering the seventh or eighth grade, then created projects based on those topics.
“The kids got to really dig deep into the perspective of the life of the social worker, the experience of people that have adopted children and the experience of children who have been through the process,” Garcia said. “It was really powerful for them to experience.”
The curriculum was divided into three different subjects, one for each week. The first week delved into the foster care system and how children end up there, the second week was about the process that families go through to finalize an adoption, and the third week involved the trauma that many foster children experience.
During the first week, students created about a dozen templates for electronic picture books that families could use to record their history and “tell the story of how the family and the child came together,” Garcia said. These templates will be used by families at the Kinship Center.
“One of the most powerful pieces of feedback that I got from the kids was that this was work that will continue to be used for years and years down the road and will benefit children and the families for however long Kinship Center decides to use these for,” Garcia said.
Eighth-grader Jennifer Zavala said she enjoyed the creativity aspect of the project.
“What I enjoyed most about making the family picture books was that we put whatever we wanted and used our creativity,” Zavala explained. “… This project was different because in other projects when we show them off we usually throw them away, but with this one parents are going to see and use them.”
Fellow classmate Edith Bautista said, “I mostly enjoyed knowing that the project was for a good cause, which was knowing the kids and parents would have memories of each other.”
In the second week, students designed a “blackout poem,” in which they took a page from a book, crossed out or blackened words and added artwork to create a poem.
“They ended up with a brand-new work of art,” Garcia said.
The poems were then hung on wooden trees called “poetrees” and given to the Kinship Center to put on display.
“I enjoyed this project because there was art involved, and I enjoyed finding words to create the theme,” said Angel Avila, who is entering eighth grade. “The most difficult part of the poem was finding the right words for the theme.”
Student Aria Palomino said, “I enjoyed this project because others are going to be able to see this and hopefully feel empowered.”
The last week of class students assembled and decorated rocking horses, which will be donated to young children in foster care. Garcia said they learned about how the repetitive motion of a rocking horse “can be soothing to children who are dealing with trauma.”
Seventh-grader Tilly Garcia said this was her favorite project.
“I enjoyed working in a group and using our creativity to decorate the horses,” she explained. “It felt nice that we were going to be giving back to the children in foster care.”
In addition to reading assignments and discussions about the topics at hand, students also heard from a few guest speakers, including children and adults who have gone through the foster care system themselves and social workers from the Kinship Center.
“These students were some of the deepest thinkers I have met,” said Gayle Ward, a social worker at Kinship Center. “They are good problem solvers, and there may be a few future social workers in the group.”
Vista Verde students Alejandra Uribe and Elsy Villanueva both enjoyed the presentations and hearing about others’ experiences with the foster care system.
“This class has changed my thoughts because now I am more thankful for having a loving, caring family,” Villanueva said.
Eighth-grader Cruz Robles said, “What I have enjoyed about this class is that we are helping our community. Instead of wasting time playing video games, we as a class came to the school to work in the summer to help out others.”
The school hosted an exhibition July 6 for the students to show their work.
Matt Garcia said the class was one of the best experiences of his teaching career.
“Hopefully this is the direction more and more of our projects here at Vista will go in — work that not only enriches the education of the students, but also benefits the community outside of the walls of our school,” he said.
