Service
Learning service as a way of life
How does Mustard Seed encourage students in a life of service?
First, each child experiences himself or herself as able to give. As students develop and are affirmed for their gifts opportunities are given to exercise those gifts, not just as ways to provide self-satisfaction, but in the understanding that each child's gifts are given to promote the well-being of the community.
Just as each child's gifts are different, so are the ways in which children can serve. Service spans the range of great to small -- collecting money to dig wells in Kenya, sending children's books to South Africa, gathering towels and toiletries for a local shelter, providing baby food for the pantry next door, working with a younger student, carrying the class library books to the library.
From beginning to end MSS seeks to structure the classroom so that service is not only an opportunity, but an expectation. In Kindergarten a child is designated each day to be "first." If Latifah is first today she will lead every line. But she goes first in order to open the coat closets or hold the doors for her classmates. And if someone needs encouragement or consolation during the day, Latifah is likely to be asked to assist.
In the Eighth Grade students receive both increased privilege and responsibility. They are allowed to eat off campus and enjoy extended free social time, but each day some of them give up part of this freedom to play with younger students in the park or serve pizza to the whole school. Part of the Mustard Seed education is the lived-out principle that leaders should be servants.
We serve neighbors far and near. Within the class or school setting, tying someone's shoe, offering a tissue, picking up dropped papers, or speaking an encouraging word are simple ways in which children serve on a daily basis. Projects also are developed which reach beyond the school walls. Service is nurtured in a variety of ways but always within the context of community: school, neighborhood, state, country, world.
