Service Learning: Hands Dirty Day at Eastern Christian Middle School

A fall highlight of the Eastern Christian School Wyckoff Campus is the annual Hands Dirty Day. On this special school day, our entire student body, plus faculty and parents, spend the morning serving a variety of local organizations. We were excited to get to do this again this year after COVID prevented us from many of our normal activities; but that also meant there were fewer locations that had an outside option for us or that were allowing people into their facilities. 

Our day was filled with activities such as: raking leaves and spreading mulch for organizations such as Camp Shiloh, our own school’s thrift store, Ditto, benefited from students organizing and sorting donations, and many churches are sparkling from the cleaning that took place. A number of students remained at school to create holiday decorations that would be delivered to the Holland Home or Christian Health Center. And a few others got busy painting offices at Bethany Church!

What a great way to demonstrate our spiritual theme of being “Rooted in Christ”! Our students spent time in their homerooms reflecting on the day and made some excellent connections to our theme: 

“God wants us to help others and to share the gospel. By regularly helping others and doing it for God and not for the fame we can get more firmly rooted in Christ and help others get rooted as well.” –Kayla, 8th Grade

“ I think it connects to the theme because when you serve others it builds your relationship with Christ. When you build your relationship with Christ you get an even better relationship with him.” –Zaven, 7th Grade

“We bear fruit by serving. We also bear fruit by loving others and helping them when they are going through tough times or just need help.” –Ben, 6th Grade

“The theme this year connects to Hands Dirty day because if we are rooted in Christ, then we will want to help other people and that will help us grow in Christ.” –Jonas, 5th Grade

We can’t forget to thank a few people for the work they put into this day: 

•  Mr. Culp and Mr. Flim for driving the buses
• Mrs. Fletcher and Mrs. Matthews for donating our hog dog lunch
• More than 30 parents who chaperoned and some of them even stayed to supervise lunch
• 21 service partners
• Mrs. Vincenti who spends countless hours organizing every detail of the day

Our partner organizations were very thankful to our student body for their hard work. We’re already looking forward to Hands Dirty Day 2022!