Marcellus Central School District Students Volunteer at Samaritan Center

For more than a dozen years students and faculty/staff from Marcellus Senior High School (MSHS) have been volunteering their services at the Samaritan Center in Syracuse, New York. The Samaritan Center is “an interfaith effort to feed the homeless and needy men, woman, and children of Syracuse”. The mission of the Samaritan Center is “rooted in the belief that sound nutrition is the first step in enabling people to cope and become productive, self sufficient members of society.” The Samaritan Center mission depends on volunteer efforts and more than 500 volunteers help serve 150-300 hot meals a day throughout the year. Counted among those dedicated volunteers are students and faculty/staff from Marcellus Senior High School who donate their time washing dishes, bussing tables, and serving meals once every week. The Marcellus Schools’ service learning connection with the Samaritan Center was initiated by former Marcellus Senior High School English teacher Ted Wright more than a dozen years ago. A recent visit to the Samaritan Center’s downtown Syracuse dining facility found Ron Richer, retired MSHS Math teacher, hard at work helping to serve dinners. This school year Marcellus faculty members Ellen Schneider/MSHS English teacher, Robin Brown/MSHS and Driver Middle School (DMS) Foreign Language teacher, Audrey Misiano/MSHS Foreign Language teacher, Jessica Hehl/DMS Science teacher, and Hannah Naczi/DMS Science teacher have all carried on the tradition of volunteering at the Samaritan Center. The teachers have rotated on a weekly basis chaperoning MSHS students to the Samaritan Center on Thursday afternoons throughout the school year. The Samaritan Center Marcellus connection has been expanded this year with the addition of volunteers from Driver Middle School. The Driver Middle School (DMS) Science Olympiad team, under the guidance of faculty advisors Hannah Naczi and Jessica Hehl, volunteered at the center in December. Additionally, the DMS Mustang Pride organization, under the guidance of Kathy Rein/DMS English teacher and Diane McArdell/DMS Speech Therapist, is organizing an initiative to involve DMS students in the weekly volunteer efforts at the Samaritan Center. The group raised more than $600 for the Samaritan Center through a school-wide “Samaritan Week” and a Samaritan Center school dance. Of particular note this school year is the involvement of Marcellus Senior High School senior class members Alex Irby and Eric Hagan who organized and implemented a “toiletries” drive for the Samaritan Center as part of their Senior Project. Along with the core subject areas the Marcellus Central School District believes that service learning is an essential element in a student’s education. The Samaritan Center volunteer initiative is just one small example of how students and staff in the Marcellus Central School District act upon that service learning belief.