SLANT Spotlight On: Otis Brown 2nd Grade

Team:  2nd Grade, Otis Brown Elementary, Irving ISD
City:  Irving
Participants:  130

Otis Brown Elementary second grade students researched the need for food for kids at their school and found out about the North Texas Food Bank fire that occurred this summer.  Students were very concerned and decided to do something about it.  They wrote scripts, directed and filmed commercials for the school to promote the Cans for Kids food drive.  The children organized the drive, making fliers and posters to promote the drive.  They also counted and collected the cans and graphed the results, reporting the results to the school on the school television channel.

The children challenged the whole school to bring in cans and finally collected more than 1,000 cans for the North Texas Food Bank.  “The kids loved it and learned a lot about persuasion, graphing and service,” said teacher Michelle West.

SLANT Spotlight On: Girls On The Run, North Richland Hills

Team: Girls on the Run, North Richland Hills

City: North Richland Hills

Participants: 20

The girls are currently working on several projects:  posting notes to raise the self-image of girls at their school, holding a food drive and delivering baskets to residents of a local retirement center.

They will make announcements at school to collect food for a community program called Christmas Providers.  The girls will tally up the food from each homeroom, box it up each day until collection day on Dec. 5, and then announce the winning class in the food drive.  They are also going to create and deliver Thanksgiving baskets for the residents of Horizon Bay.  In addition, they have been making their school a better place by placing anonymous, encouraging post-it notes in public places in their school.  The girls want to encourage their peers as well as senior citizens and others in their community.

Read more about the great SLANT projects currently underway in this month's issue of The Compass!

SLANT 2011-2012 Kicks Off at H.O.P.E. Farm

The 2011-2012 SLANT: Service Learning Adventures in North Texas program kicked off with a bang at H.O.P.E. Farm in Fort Worth on Saturday, September 17.  Twenty-five boys from H.O.P.E. Farm and nearly 100 volunteers grabbed paint brushes, hammers, shovels and more to implement the service-learning project they designed.  With a goal to inspire a healthier, more active lifestyle, the youth spent the morning installing exercise equipment, landscaping, cleaning up trash and painting murals.  In addition to H.O.P.E. Farm, they also worked on projects at a nearby community center.

SLANT is designed to inspire youth to take up the challenge of improving their neighborhoods and communities in unique and creative ways.  Daryl Johnston, former Dallas Cowboys fullback and current FOX Sports analyst, continues to serve as the chair for the program and Bank of America has returned as the program sponsor.

Thank you to all of the partners who helped make this project a success:  Bank of America, H.O.P.E. Farm, Cooper Institute, Chicken Express-Fort Worth, Sherwin-Williams, Chameleon Chamber Group, City of Fort Worth, Kelsey Patterson, Willie Amos and Big Thought!

Get involved!  Register your team now at myslant.org.