Division: Middle School
Teaches: Seventh Grade English, Eighth Grade History
Hannah Jacoby-Rupp created the Seventh Grade Service Collaborative in 2021 with the support of Keino Terrell, Director of Middle School. There’s something specific about the seventh grade energy, she observed, that makes it the perfect grade to introduce community service concepts to.
“Seventh graders have a strong sense of justice, and feel things very deeply. But they get frustrated when they can’t figure out how to participate in fixing things they think are wrong,” she noted.
The collaborative is a year-long, co-curricular program, which kicks off in the fall with lessons in each seventh grade advisory group centered around three social issues: food insecurity, housing justice, and environmental stewardship. The students examine these topics holistically and locally.
“We get them to think about questions like: What does it mean if the city hasn’t invested in planting trees in certain neighborhoods?” Hannah said. “And what are their responsibilities to their city to ensure that people have access to housing and food?”
In the spring, the students choose from eight community organizations, like Bethesda Project and Whosoever Gospel Mission, where they’ll volunteer four times. Hannah intentionally designed this component of the program to move beyond a “one and done” model and build real relationships between GFS and the organizations.
“The relationships are getting even stronger as our partners realize what 13-year olds can do,” she said. “This year we got the most amazing letters from the orgs we worked with who were blown away by our students’ curiosity and work ethic.”