A Day of Service

All Upper and Middle School students will spend the day serving our local communities on Wednesday, May 4. To launch the day, Class I service leaders will share reflections on their service experiences at Milton with students gathered in assembly. Then students and faculty will fan out to projects at over 30 sites on campus, in the towns of Milton, Randolph, Quincy, Weymouth, Brighton, Dorchester, and in downtown Boston. They will travel by bus, vans, T, and on foot. They will wash windows, do grounds work, walk dogs, play cards with elders, read to children, cook meals for the homeless, prepare farmland for planting, paint a playground, host a field day for hospitalized children, and much more. Especially after the long winter, and at a time of tight budgets for agencies, many of the project sites have been eagerly awaiting the return of Milton Academy volunteer crews. Several projects will be led by students who have volunteered every week at a particular site throughout the year.

On campus that day, the Middle School will begin with a campus cleanup on the grounds and bordering roads. Then they will host elderly neighbors from three locations of Milton Residences for the Elderly. In Pieh Commons students will offer instrumental, vocal, and speech performances, followed by refreshments and conversation with their elderly guests. One group of Class II students will run workshops—a science lab, a writing class, and music— for the fifth and sixth graders of Dorchester’s Epiphany Middle School. Class I will host a field day for 180 Boston public elementary school children on our green fields and track.

We will post site assignments for all students in Classes IV–II on Monday, May 2. Students should pay attention to notes regarding planned tasks and appropriate clothing. In general, students should wear work clothing and shoes, and be prepared with sunscreen, hats, water, raincoats, etc. The service plans will go on, rain or shine.

This will be the third biannual Community Service Day; the first occurred in 2001 as a result of a student Self-Governing Association initiative. As the co-head monitors wrote in 2000 in their proposal to the administration and faculty, Community Service Day is an opportunity for everyone to experience service, especially as a way to “raise political and social awareness” by “[applying] (hands on) the thoughts and concepts brought about during Seminar Day,” which takes place in alternating years. “Most importantly though, Community Service Day …[allows] all of us, at least for a little while, to step outside of the ‘Milton bubble’ and learn about the real world.”

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