This spring, New Horizons students teamed up with the Kinship Community Food Center for a Shorewood-wide food drive. After weeks of planning, the food drive will begin in May. This event was led by the students, from coordinating with Kinship to organizing an informational assembly for the high school. Their efforts were overseen by Lisa McFarland, the coordinator for the GED2 Program and instructor for French and New Horizons.
Students and other food drive volunteers will help to facilitate food donations from Shorewood residents.
“We will be dropping off bags to almost every resident in the village,” McFarland said. “Friday, May 23 we will be delivering bags to Shorewood residents asking them to fill their bags with non-perishables. We will then pick up the bags Saturday, May 31.”
This partnership with Kinship was not completely out of the blue; New Horizons has been contributing to the organization’s efforts throughout the school year. Their experiences and observations while volunteering inspired the food drive.
“We volunteer at the community food center every Tuesday,” McFarland said. “Over time, we began to see their supplies dwindle. It was an opportunity for us to help.”
The students also looked into the “Bay Gives Back” food drive, organized by Whitefish Bay students in collaboration with Kinship. However, this event only aids the community food center in the fall, leaving a gap in the amount of donations between the spring and summertime. This prompted New Horizons to take action.
In order to spread the word, students organized an assembly, inviting guest speakers from Kinship to speak about the organization’s purpose, its impact on the community, and information regarding the upcoming food drive.
Students took up leadership roles as they planned the assembly, dividing up the work based on their individual strengths.
“The presentation was honestly a really fun experience, and I think it gave everyone a voice in their own way,” said Caroline Garvin, New Horizons student. “I really got to voice my opinions; I spoke during the assembly. Some of my classmates, like Ziggy, made the whole backdrop for [the presentation] and the QR code, and the art. My other peer, Thomas, made music for the background while we were walking in and out.”
During the assembly, the students promoted the second part of their efforts with Kinship: gathering volunteers.
“The food drive is not something we can do alone, we will need at least 90 volunteers,” McFarland said. “This is an extraordinary opportunity for all of Shorewood High School to work together for a significant cause. This is why we invited Kinship to present to the school; we wanted to bring others into this ‘community of generosity.’”
Kinship provides an opportunity for students to meet new people as well as to get a feel for the workplace within a safe environment.
“You are expected to work hard and I feel like that will give you a real look at [what] being in the workforce will really be,” said Billy Mehr, New Horizons student. “It’s a really good environment also, just the people that are there, just being able to interact with different people in the community that you generally wouldn’t talk to in Shorewood, and then seeing new perspectives as well as trying new food, too.”
McFarland was not only able to assist the students in their efforts, but also observe the lessons this collaboration has been able to provide.
“I’m proud of the students for utilizing their strengths and working together,” McFarland said. “This year has really shown me the benefit of working as a team; we each have a certain skill set to offer. Individuality is celebrated. As a collective, we are stronger and can accomplish more. They have really shown up in a big way.”
According to McFarland, this experience also gave students various learning opportunities.
“I hope our students gain confidence from this experience, a confidence they will carry with them through all future endeavors,” McFarland said.
What is New Horizons:
New Horizons is a school, chartered by the Shorewood School District, that offers different educational opportunities for its students than the traditional school schedule.
“New Horizons is an alternative program that integrates environmental stewardship and a commitment to the community throughout our curriculum,” McFarland said. “Designed to empower students, our classroom is collaborative and coupled with hands-on experiences throughout Shorewood and the greater Milwaukee area, Kinship Community Food Center being one of them.”
The charter school has given the students unique opportunities to be themselves that they might not have received in a regular classroom environment.
“It’s definitely somewhere where you have space to breathe, and you’re able to connect with your classmates a lot more and you’re able to learn about the community and about the area where you live,” said Aeron Guy, New Horizons student. “We do a lot of stuff in nature outside; we do a lot of volunteering and we are able to learn in a way that you’re not able to in a regular school classroom setting.”
Another important part of New Horizons is that students get a chance to meet lots of different people.
“It doesn’t just isolate you with just one group of people all year, and it also gives you an opportunity to connect with the community around you and different parts of Milwaukee; it gives us a larger community,” Meht said.
New Horizons’s teaching method, which asks participants to show their knowledge and apply it in real life, is a large part of what draws students to it.
“What interested me was the more real-life experiences you get from it,” said Mae van den Kieboom, New Horizons student. “I feel like in many standardized classes it’s more ‘sit down, absorb the knowledge, apply the knowledge,’ but in New Horizons, we take it to more of an ‘okay, we’re learning this, we’re going to live it and experience it.’ It just helps you internalize it more, and I thought that was really interesting. The way it pushes expectations of what schools should be, that was really cool, and it kind of drew me towards it.”