Our first Middle School Service Learning Day of the year was an outstanding success this week. Thank you so much to all the parent drivers and volunteers who helped make it possible for our 210 students to head out to organizations all over Portland to do work for children and families, veterans, the environment, animals, and to address hunger and homelessness. Chaplain Mel, our Service Learning Coordinator, worked her magic in coordinating this complicated day, and it was truly spectacular to see everyone heading out into the community to do good work.

I had the privilege of going to the Oregon Food Bank, where the students stood alongside other community members scooping flour into individual bags, weighing it, sealing it closed, and packing it up in boxes. As you might imagine, it was a messy affair, but it was also joyful, and all of us felt so great to hear at the end of our morning that in our short visit, we had packed 1,990 pounds of flour to serve 1,658 meals. 

Not all the work that we do in the world has such a concrete result, an instant feeling of accomplishment, or a number attached to it. But it is great for students to see the impact they can have in such a short amount of time and see the result of their work that lives beyond them. I am left with a quotation that was on the wall at the Food Bank: “Life’s most urgent question is: what are you doing for others?” by Martin Luther King Jr. Our students are doing so much to put their power for good into the world.