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Students get a chance to build something lasting
By Eric Hanson
Star Tribune
Wednesday, November 1, 2006
Students from Oak
Grove School,
for students with emotional or behavioral disorders, are learning about hard work
and volunteerism by working for Habitat for Humanity. For some, it's a rare chance to feel
pride.
Every Friday this school year, Maria Christensen's students from Oak Grove School are working on a Habitat for
Humanity project in St. Paul. It's an effort that is part of Oak Grove's mission to help students build transition skills through hands-on community
volunteer work.
Christensen has worked on a smaller scale with Habitat for
Humanity in the past, but this project includes 12 students and an ongoing
effort.
Oak Grove is a school in the Mounds View district that
serves students with severe emotional and behavioral disorders. Its student body comes from several different
school districts, including White Bear Lake,
Anoka-Hennepin, Stillwater
and elsewhere, Christensen said.
"A lot of our students probably would qualify for a Habitat
house," Christensen said. "More than
half of our kids are on free and reduced lunch.
Some of them don't really have the opportunity through their family to
do volunteer work. It's a neat way to
get connected with something else besides what's going on in your life."
One student who struggles with mental illness, she said,
told her one day that he was really proud of the work they'd done that
day. "I said, ‘Well yeah, that's really
cool, we worked really hard.' And he stopped me and said, ‘No, you have no idea
what I'm saying. This is the first time
that I've ever felt proud of myself." I was super neat," Christensen said.
Other volunteer efforts by the school's students include
Meals on Wheels, doing chores for seniors and an international famine relief
program called Feed My Starving Children.
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