HGSE G.I.V.E.S. to Local Elementary School

From the rooftop greenhouse of the John Marshall Elementary School in Dorchester, you've technically been able to see the striped gas tanks on the harbor near UMass/Boston and follow the contoured grid of triple-deckers downhill toward Fields Corner with your gaze. But you've had to squint, because the windows of the long-abandoned greenhouse have been clouded with dust and soot.

If substitute teacher Sophia Bishop-Rice and her colleagues continue to harvest as much help as they did from HGSE students and staff one recent Saturday, the 600-some Marshall students will soon be able to "get their hands in the soil," she says. "They'll have the pleasure of growing organic vegetables, and of giving the vegetables away to hungry people who need them. And they'll start finding out where their food comes from" -- in this case, from the seed-bed shelves (caked with dried mud until HGSE showed up) that run its entire length on either side of a walkway.

The HGSE volunteers came to the Marshall as part of the Graduate Students in Various Efforts of Service (G.I.V.E.S.) program run by Felicia Brown out of the Office of Student Affairs. G.I.V.E.S. aims to enhance the student experience by providing a forum for the HGSE community to learn about and participate in service to the community at large. Inspired by Marshall principal Teresa Harvey-Jackson and discipline dean Itonyia Dismond, Bishop-Rice contacted City Year to see if the community-building corps could organize a service day. City Year in turn connected with Brown, a City Year alumna. Believing in "the power of citizen service to solve community problems," Brown saw it as a chance "to strengthen the bridge between Harvard and the greater Boston community." Before long, she had more than 50 HGSE volunteers headed to the Marshall.

The greenhouse project wasn't the half of it, however. In several groups, the volunteers worked all day on different projects. In the cafeteria, one group built storage shelving units. Upstairs, another group organized by grade a cluttered supply room to give teachers ready access to math-and-science materials. In the gym, still others whitewashed faded walls and painted athletes' silhouettes and inspirational quotations onto bright murals. In hallways all over the school, HGSE volunteers, some on knees, some at tables, others on ladders, painted murals, posters, and signs in visual aid to lessons taught in nearby classrooms -- a fish mural, a music mural, a water-cycle mural -- so that walking a hallway is like flipping through an illustrated textbook.

Most work groups included a grade-school student or two who were pleased to have Harvardians helping out for the day and happy to serve as school representatives. Jalanae St. John, a Marshall fourth-grader, spent part of the day whitewashing the gym's walls, part painting book cases in the cafeteria, and part building helicopter mobiles to hang from classroom ceilings. Her diligent girlfriends Cacia and Calia Weekes, students at an elementary school in Jamaica Plain whose mother works at the Marshall, helped out as well. Bishop-Rice's son, a student elsewhere in Dorchester, was excited to participate. Marshall student Barbara Holder-Milton and her father helped out in the greenhouse, while Jessica Jagmohan, Jasmine Mercado, and Vishwarie Seewanan worked in the gym. A hard-working second-grade boy named Jaylen Bocage made the rounds too -- but was too busy cleaning the greenhouse shelves to offer more than a friendly grin in response to a grown-up's questions.

HGSE student Nora Crowley, fresh from painting botanical charts, offered encouraging remarks about the work she'd begun in the greenhouse, however. She'd heard Bishop-Rice observe that the greenhouse needs to have its ventilation system repaired and one of its fans replaced. "Though the greenhouse still has a way to go before it's ready," she reflected, "it's good to see the transformation of the space just from one day of cleaning. We're making some headway here, and we're generating the momentum that can carry the project through to completion."

Crowley has probably heard loud and clear what City Year service coordinator Mollie Puskan referred to at the start of the day as "President Obama's call to action" in the rebuilding of the neglected areas of America. But you got the feeling, there with your view of the harbor, that she and her HGSE classmates have been responding to such calls for quite a while already.