Minding Our Manners: 8th Grade Social Justice Projects

(Photo courtesy of Sham Jolimie under Creative Commons)

Every Thursday the teaching team will meet with the 8th grade to check in with them, help them stay on task, and make suggestions. This week we wanted to make sure the students were set with everything they needed before the holidays, so that they could not only do some work during the break, but also be ready to hit the ground running when we return to school on January 4. Our technology teacher CJ set them up with official school Gmail accounts (which up until now have been reserved for our high school students) so that they would have a professional account to contact organizations and receive information. CJ turned off most of the social networking aspects of Gmail, as these accounts are just to be used for this project. We explained the importance of acting like a professional in both their written correspondence and spoken interviews. So to that end, we provided them with these email and phone guidelines (authored by our etiquette-savvy Core teachers, SMR and RB):

SJ PROJECT 2010-2011
EMAIL TEMPLATE
Heading: LREI Students Seek To Assist YOU

Mr./Ms. Contact Person, Job Title
Audubon Society
14 Tenth Avenue
New York, NY 10023

Dear Ms. Contact Person:
Or Dear Sir or Madam:
Or Dear Audubon Society:

We are eighth graders at LREI: The Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School. Our class is embarking on a Social Justice Project and is seeking to assist organizations in NYC, like yours, which work on behalf of various civil and human rights issues.

Our group is very interested in your organization and would like to assist you in any way (i.e. as volunteers) to gain hands-on experience in the field.

There are four students in our group and our goal is to volunteer 5 times over the next 4 months. Concurrently, we will be writing about, researching and creating a website on the topic of social justice for our school and wider community.

If your organization is interested, please contact us as soon as possible so that we can follow up with more specific information about our project. If there is someone else that we should contact, please let us know.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Group Names
LREI: Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School
272 Sixth Avenue
New York, NY 10014
Contact email

SJ PROJECT 2010-2011
PHONE SCRIPT

(We had quite a bit of fun reading these aloud and role-playing them in class:)

“Hello. May I speak with [Contact Person] or [a volunteer coordinator]?
Thank you.”
(If the answer if no): “May I leave a message?”

Script: (something like this can be left on voicemail or message, too)

Hi! My name is ___________________ and I’m an eighth grader at LREI: Little Red School House, in Greenwich Village. I am embarking on a Social Justice Project at my school and am looking to find volunteer opportunities with NYC civil and human rights related organizations.

My group heard about your organization, and is very interested in the possibility of volunteering for you, and learning about what you do. We have a team of 4 students and are looking to volunteer approximately 5 times over the next few months.

Possible ways the conversation could go:

a) Can I talk to your teacher?: Yes, my teacher’s name is __________ and they can explain more about our project’s assignments.

b) What are you actually doing? Can you tell me more about this?: Sure! The curriculum in our class this year focuses on civil and humans rights. As a way for us to gain some real-world experience learning about these issues, our grade has chosen Social Justice-related topics and are learning about them through research, interviews and volunteer experiences with various NYC organizations whose work relates to our study.

We learned about your organization’s work on behalf of ________________________ and are excited about what you do. We’d like to learn more by visiting and helping out. We have a group of 4 students who would like to come at least 5 times over the next few months.

We are also building websites about what we learn and will present our final project to the entire school.

c) I am not the person that you should speak to, can I give you the contact of the correct person? Yes, thank you. We will follow up with them by phone call and email. (Make sure that you write everything down!)

d) What type of work/volunteer experience do you want to have? We are interested in learning about anything that relates to your organization, the issues and communities that you work with, and how you do what you do. We are mostly available afterschool and on the weekends as apprentices, interns or helpers.

In years past, students have done everything from tutoring, helping with conferences and attending meetings.

e) We actually cannot accommodate any volunteers OR we cannot have any volunteers under 18: “Okay, thank you very much for your time. Do you know of any other organization, like yours, that we could contact for our project?”

OR

“Even though we will not be able to volunteer with you, is there a possibility that we can interview you or someone else in your organization about what you do there?”

f) We cannot have you volunteer without an adult: “Okay, great. If there is an adult that can accompany us, we will let you know within the next few days.”

Before you get off of the phone, consider asking these important questions:

“When is a good time to call back and discuss our next steps?”

“What is the best contact information for you (email and phone)?”

“May we create out first meeting in January, what are good times and days for you?” (Please, discuss with your groups prior to the phone calls when good days/times are for your group?)

I love how many different skills this project includes, from independent research and web design to telephone and email etiquette. All of these are life skills that will help our students in both education and business. I’m looking forward to seeing how their attempts to connect are met, and how they handle both successes and challenges. Because as we all know, life has a way of going off script–usually at the most inopportune moments!

Happy holidays. I’ll see you next year in the library,

Jennifer Hubert Swan, Middle School Librarian