U.S. Jones find education through service in unique project

The fifth grade enrichment students at U.S. Jones Elementary School are in the midst of a project that will benefit Kairos International Prison Ministry and, subsequently, inmates at the William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility in Bessemer.

As a group of local Kairos workers ready to address the inmates later this week, each speaker is required to take some 12 dozen cookies to the facility.

Rather than having the Kairos speakers purchase the cookies, USJ fifth grade enrichment students are baking 50 dozen to be sent to Donaldson.

“I think it is a community service. It gets them involved in community service and doing for other people,” U.S. Jones fifth grade enrichment teacher Stephanie Polk said.

“I told them everybody is only a couple of decisions away from maybe being in their position anyway,” USJ enrichment teacher Dana Hill added. “We’re just trying to support and not be judgmental and make somebody’s day a little bit better.”

The project has been underway for approximately three weeks with the initial stages involving fundraising for the cookies’ ingredients.

The majority of that funding has come from the students themselves.

“We told them whatever they could bring to bring it, whether it was a penny, a quarter, $5,” Polk said. “You had people that were digging in their pockets and giving up that snack money to help.”

“The whole project is probably a little under $200,” Hill said.

With the ingredients purchased, the enrichment students invaded the school’s lunchroom kitchen last Friday afternoon to mix and sort the batter before wrapping the newly-made dough in foil and freezing it for future use.

“This was a big deal that we could use the lunchroom with the mixer,” Hill said, noting that U.S. Jones principal Leon Clark and the school’s cafeteria staff made the facility available for the project. “Mr. Clark kind of made all that happen. We were going to freeze (the cookies) and everybody was going to take them home and cook at home.”

Instead, the enrichment students will return to the cafeteria Wednesday to bake the cookies in order to have the treats ready to send with Kairos workers Thursday.

“Kids who aren’t in enrichment have asked if they can help. I would say school wide people have wanted to join us. We’ve got 50 helping us,” Hill said of the project’s impact on the school.

Additionally, Hill and Polk noted, the project has provided educational value on a number of levels, including its congruence with state math standards.

“It kind of goes along with your state standards, measuring, multiplying, fractions. It also kind of teaches them how to be enterprising,” Hill said.