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Elkins High School students talk about service learning program

The Inter-Mountain photo by Brooke Binns Elkins High School students offer a presentation to the Randolph County Board of Education Tuesday evening regarding a project completed and discussed in their AP Language and Composition course. Pictured from left are Isabella Karlen, Alyssa Severino, Madison Holland, Erin Dettinger, Mackenzie Holland and Taylor McKinnie.

ELKINS — Elkins High School students offered a presentation to the Randolph County Board of Education Tuesday evening in reference to a project completed and discussed in their AP Language and Composition course.

Andrew Carroll, English instructor at EHS, told BOE members and county officials the service learning program, “AP with WE,” used in his classroom makes learning more meaningful.

“This is a service learning program in the classroom. Service learning is more than volunteering and doing good – this is doing good attached to curriculum and attached to what the students are learning in class,” he explained. “This makes the learning more meaningful.”

Carroll noted AP with WE is a service learning program used in classrooms across the country; however, Carroll’s class is the only classroom in the state of West Virginia currently using the service.

According to their website, AP with WE combines academics with citizenship by “creating an opportunity for students to consider their classroom work and how it applies to the real world, while working closely with their peers to address social issues.”

Carroll went on to tell board members that students in his class have worked on projects centered around Appalachia.

“In terms of the classroom, WE Service has a really simple learning framework. It’s a four part process — students investigate and learn, they create an action plan, they take action and they report and celebrate,” he said. “My AP Language Class is sort of centered around Appalachia and how we can use language and tools to approach problems. … The student chose a problem in Appalachia like drug addiction, food access or education.”

Six female students told board members they worked to produce a project focused on the county’s proposed excess levy.

“In the fall Mr. Carroll assigned our class to write a paper on an issue that West Virginia faces; so, a lot of people did health issues or drug issues, but I decided to take a different approach and do school funding,” one student explained. “Then, we were given the WE Service assignment and we thought that school funding would be an awesome topic to do it on.”

“After we did all of our research, we knew we had to have a goal and a plan, so for our goal we made a “SMART” goal which means your goal needs to be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound,” another student explained. “So, for our SMART goal we wanted to educate the public on the pros of the levy, we wanted to get people to vote ‘yes’ for the levy.”

In order to produce their project, the students talked with members of the community, attended informational levy meetings, created a video that was posted to social media, composed an editorial and took part in informational picketing.

Members of the group went on to explain that skills they learned and developed in class helped them to complete their project.

“To reflect and kind of recap, I think this experience allowed us to learn a lot, and it wasn’t just from our project, it was from the community and going out and talking to people and reaching out to people and going all the way to Tygarts Valley and Harman. We met all different types of people and I think that really helped us. With that, we also got a lot of negative feedback, but that helped us to grow — grow our characters, grow our communication skills and be able to turn the other cheek,” Isabella Karlen explained.

Superintendent Gabriel “Gabe” Devono told students he was proud of their work.

“I want to express my appreciation and gratitude to each one of you students who did this,” he said. “I didn’t appreciate the rudeness or criticism that you received from certain people in our community. … What you did was excellent — you gave valuable information and factual information. You don’t know how proud I was of your group.”

Carroll noted 38 English students will be taking the AP exam to earn college credit this year, adding this was an increase from last year.

Also during Tuesday’s meeting Devono and Amanda Smith, board president, explained Randolph County Schools are not officially affiliated with a group within the county that is working to raise funds following the excess levy failure.

Devono read a statement from the county’s attorney, “Please know that the entity known as Randolph County United is not a board of education-approved school-support organization. All school-support organizations must be board approved pursuant to county policy 9211 and West Virginia Board of Education Policy 1224.1. Recognized organizations have to meet several mandated requirements, requirements established by the West Virginia Department of Education, and Randolph County United has not done so. Any fundraising activities by this entity are not approved by the board of education and the entity is not permitted by law to collect funds on behalf of any school.”

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