Glendale elementary school hosts Day of Service in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.
Horace Mann Elementary celebrated the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr.’s well-known philosophy with acts of kindness and service.
Last Friday, the school marked the end of its weeklong celebration with a Day of Service. Parents gathered early in the morning to clean the school and surrounding areas. Later, students used their recess time to clean the campus.
“What is also meaningful is the fact that they’re giving up their recess,” said Rosa Alonso, the school’s principal.
Recess is split between kindergarten through third-grade students and fourth- and fifth-grade students. The lower grades took a first sweep through the grassy areas, playgrounds, bungalows, cafeteria and parking lot, while the upper grades picked up where they left off.
Students rushed to their designated cleaning areas with plastic bags and gloves at the ready. One student kept track, with a pencil and paper, of how many leaves and pieces of trash she collected.
Teachers don’t supervise students during recess, but they came out to join them at the event.
Although King has been commemorated throughout all public schools since the late 1970s, Horace Mann’s student council decided to celebrate with a Day of Service for the first time this year. Chris Burt, a teacher specialist, said it all started because the student council president lives across from the school and noticed trash and furniture left on the street.
The school celebrated the civil rights figure in conjunction with Day of Acceptance, Yellow Ribbon Week and the Great Kindness Challenge. Students performed random acts of kindness to help promote peace, unity and acceptance of differences.
The purpose of the activities during the week is “to make students aware of treating people with respect, being kind to others, not to bully others. That’s why we really do combine Martin Luther King with this because that was really a lot of what he preached too,” Alonso said.
“We do specific things [to celebrate] Martin Luther King, but this whole week is celebrating an awareness of being kind to each other, being respectful,” she added.
Students created a large poster with messages about what unity means to them and what they plan to do written on hand-shaped paper cutouts.
As part of Day of Acceptance, special education students spoke a word or two about kindness every day over the public-announcement system. Some of the words used were “hope,” “happy” and “friendly.” Their siblings came to the school to read about why they were special to them.
“Some of the students are nonverbal. To get them to say ‘gentle’ or ‘kindness’ or ‘unity’ was really hard. But they were able to do it cause it was practice, practice, practice,” Burt said. “And the kids were really excited.”
Service is a year-round theme at Horace Mann. The school hosts a Kiwani Kids club, which tutors students, holds a food drive during Thanksgiving and raises funds for organizations that fight breast cancer and heart diseases.
