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Growing young minds

For Greta Krueger, teaching Vandalia Community High School students goes beyond what they can learn in the classroom. She wants them to learn about such things as career choices and being a solid citizen in their community.

Krueger took a small group of VCHS juniors and seniors to Vandalia’s Little Community Garden last fall, hoping to teach those students about the value of community service.
That went over so well, for both the students and the garden volunteers, that Krueger – with the help of other VCHS teachers and the school and district administration – decided to expand such a program this fall.
A few days before this year’s Community Garden Harvest Festival, Krueger and three other teachers – Jamie Michel, Shayla Kline and Hope Nottmeyer – coordinated a project that had all VCHS freshman performing community service work at the garden.
That field trip also included some old-fashioned, hands-on learning through a task at the Old State Burial Ground and a visit to the Vandalia Statehouse.
Krueger concedes that this wasn’t something she came up with. It’s something her own children experienced at Providence New Lennox before she and her husband, Eddie, moved to Vandalia last year.
The students in that Northern Illinois school district “had to do at least 40 hours of community service to get their diploma.
“You could hear a lot of the kids, as freshmen, complaining about it, but by the time they did it, they were actually doing over and above the 40 hours, because they loved – among other things, meeting the community members,” Krueger said.
At VCHS, she wanted to start out on a small scale, “to see if it would even work here.
“All of the feedback I got last year was great, and it helped the kids so much,” she said.
“My viewpoint was, if doing just 20 juniors and seniors worked out so well, why not do the whole freshman class, because a lot of these kids will live in this community when they grow up.
“And starting something this young, maybe they will think about this when they get older,” Krueger said.“Maybe they will implement this kind of thing with their own families.”
A 1985 graduate of VCHS, Krueger said that she and her classmates didn’t have the chance to do something like this, “but we probably would have done it.
“We have a lot of families here that currently do this kind of thing in the community, but for those that never have, this gives them the opportunity.
“We did this kind of thing in Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts or some other kind of organization, but some of the kids here don’t have the opportunity to get involved in those kinds of organizations,” Krueger said.
The benefits of this kind of program, she said, are numerous.
The most-obvious benefit was the work they did to help community garden volunteers harvest this year’s crops and flowers.
“Sid (File) and Joan (Clayton) were so helpful in working with the kids at the garden, and they were so thankful for the work that the kids had done,” Krueger said.
“When you do a service-oriented project, it gives the students an opportunity to maybe even look at career choices.
“The bottom line is that this open their minds to different things,” she said.
In addition to opening their minds, the field trip opened the students' eyes.
“I’d passed by the garden before, but I’d never really looked at it,” Alexandria Sasse said.
“I learned what they (volunteers) did there, and it was fun to help them."

Devon Boyd added, “I just liked working in the garden, helping them out.
“And I was out of town that Saturday, or I would have gone (to the Harvest Festival),” he said.
Krueger said, “It helps to have these kids help out with things like this. Now they know about what’s out there, about things they can do to help their community.
“I also think that getting the kids out and doing things like this benefit the standardized test scores, too, because everybody learns differently,” she said.
“Some of my students who don’t excel in the classroom excelled out there (at the garden). They took over, and it was so great to see them in that role,” Krueger said.
The freshman class was divided into four groups of 25 students. While two groups were working in the garden, a third group was holding a scavenger hunt in the Old State Burial Ground next to the garden, and the fourth group was taking a guided tour through the Vandalia Statehouse.
The visits to the cemetery and the Statehouse, Krueger said, “were to just give them a little bit of history about the city.
“When I was young, I don’t think I ever went to that cemetery. But I’ve heard some of the stories (about the cemetery) from some of the older members of the community,” she said.
The scavenger hunt, drafted by Kline, had students looking for such things as: a politician; someone who had served in the military; the longest epitaph; and the oldest tombstone.
That experience, Krueger said, “opens them to a new level of thinking.
“We thought, instead of just using a black and white book, or reading about this, let’s teach this way.
“They’re actually seeing things and touching them. It’s something tangible, not just reading about it in a book,” Krueger said.
“I want these kids to have pride in their community, and I hope this helps to accomplish that,” she said.
And while the trip to the Statehouse may not have been a first for most of the students, it was still a learning experience, according to Boyd.
“I’d been there before, but I was with my friends and I didn’t really pay attention then. It was really cool this time, to hear about everything there,” he said.
Yet another benefit of the field trip, Krueger said, was that the students became better acquainted with their classmates.
“We intentionally separated them out into alphabetical groups, so they would be with some of their classmates that they didn’t know very well.
“Putting them together like this had them working together, which allowed them to get to know each other better,” she said.
“It brings about a little more of a cohesive environment for the freshman class.”
Back in the classroom, Krueger extended the learning experience with her English students.
“Two classes did different research on (local) groups that help people out, and they made presentations on them. It kind of evolved into this,” she said.
“Not only were they learning about what those groups do, they were doing their language and English.
“They’re doing posters, they’re making the presentations … and their graded on their grammar. So you can put the focus right back where it needs to be,” Krueger said.
Her honors class even went one step further.
“I had them come up with something that we, as a class, could do in the community. They’re going to vote on it, and if they want to do it, we are going to take that project on ourselves,” she said.
Their idea was a food and clothing drive, with the students both accepting and collecting those goods, and distributing them to those in need.
“Not that this is going to happen,” Krueger said, “but it gets them to thinking about things they can possibly do to help their community … and they’re so excited about it.”
This is also a different way of learning, she said.
“In order to present a cause, they need to be articulate,” she said. “And they don’t even realize that they are learning.
“What all of this really does is gets them to connecting to the knowledge that they need to learn to be successful, to go on to college or trade school or technical school, or to a job,” Krueger said.
“It gets them thinking, ‘I’m almost out there.’”
In order for this field trip to happen, Krueger and others involved in the project needed to get the approval of VCHS Principal Randy Protz, Superintendent Rich Well and the district’s board of education.
“Mr. Protz and Mr. Well have backed me on this, and I have nothing but good things to say about this school district, on how they are so open to these new ideas.
“These kind of things get people so motivated,” Krueger said.
Well said that he, like Krueger, can see the benefits of getting students out of the classroom once in a while.
“From a superintendent’s standpoint, I think it’s great to get kids involved in community service.
“They get to see a lot of different functions in the community, whereas they might not have had that opportunity otherwise.
“It helps to instill a sense of giving,” Well said.
Krueger said that the project also pulled a lot of people at VCHS together into a team.
“The lunch crew here was just amazing, and the bus staff did a great job – this just made the whole school work together,” she said.
For Krueger, these first two field trips were just a beginning.
“My goal is to start out small, but go bigger, go broader, like taking some kids out of the community for some bigger projects, something with a broader scope,” she said.

 

Checking a tombstone in the Old State Burial Ground during a scavenger hunt are, from left to right, Dalton Thomas, Ben Stroble, Johanna Walton and Jordan Wagner.

Five Vandalia Community High School freshmen help community garden volunteer Linda Daniels with plants harvested from the garden. From left to right are Courtney Ulmer, Renee Smith, Brayden Summers, Matt Mathers and Denise Simmons.

Working in Vandalia’s Little Community Garden is VCHS freshman Blake Torbeck. Behind him is Marjorie Price.

Vandalia Community High School English teacher Greta Krueger, left, tells a group of freshmen students about the history of the Old State Burial Ground before sending them out on a scavenger hunt.

Alec Brackenbush gathers information from a tombstone for his scavenger hunt team.

Working in Vandalia’s Little Community Garden are, from left to right, are Dalton Waschle, Blake Murphy and Sam Opfer.

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