SERVICE LEARNING
Legacy Day: A Tradition Begins
by Sara Stephenson, Assistant Director of the Middle School
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Despite my strong English accent and London upbringing, a large part of my heart resides in Dallas, Texas, where I spent seven years of my early career teaching at Greenhill School, a coeducational, independent school that shares many programmatic philosophies with Blake. Greenhill actively works to foster a true sense of community amongst its faculty, students and parents and to help the 1,500 people on campus feel more connected to each other.
In 1998 the school introduced the Greenhill Legacy Program to support this goal. Launched by two of the school's leaders and visionaries, Tom Perryman and Elaine Velvin, the program centers around "legacy groups," sets of mixed-age kids, teachers, administrators and support staff. These legacy groups have become a part of the way one belongs to the Greenhill community.
I clearly remember the first time I started to understand the power of this legacy idea. I looked out of my classroom window and saw dozens of kids and teachers walking to their assigned legacy rooms. It was wonderful to see so many different ages of kids meeting and greeting each other in the hallways and classrooms. Upperclassmen ran over to their favorite middle school teachers, sixth graders rushed to hug the first grade teachers they still missed, teachers waved at colleagues that they hadn't seen since the first week of school, seniors gave their little cousins piggy-back rides across the courtyard ... all this and the actual afternoon activities hadn't even begun!
I quickly became close to my legacy group kids and got to know the other teachers in my group well. We were "Green 12," or the "Gorgeous Greenies," as we called ourselves. The legacy groups were assigned the four colors of the history of the school: green, gold, white and blue. Over the years I watched my legacy group kids grow up. We bade goodbye to our seniors and welcomed a new group of kindergartners to replace them.
On Friday, Oct. 6, Blake will celebrate its first-ever Convocation and Legacy Day during which the entire school will join together in small groups to celebrate being a community. We will work on service projects together, including packaging food for developing countries, making fleece blankets for the homeless, creating artwork for local schools and senior communities and working on "whisper phones," devices that encourage and promote child literacy. This enormous undertaking has been energetically fueled by a desire to see Blake create its own long-lasting and indelible impression of community on all of its members. We hope to start a tradition that will pass into Blake legend. At some point in the future, alumni visitors might start a conversation with each other by asking: "What legacy group were you? Blue, green, white or brown?"
So don't be surprised if your children come home this fall and tell you they made new friends from a different division, or that they met some cool teachers, or that they're a proud member of the Blue Beetles, or that they'd like to wear all green to school in order to win a Legacy Day color war, or that they worked to ensure that a homeless person has a warm blanket this winter. Listen carefully to the details your children give you because they are part of a brand-new tradition that will grow with them as they journey through Blake and beyond.
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