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Kids Who Care

Spotlight on:

Maxson Middle School
Plainfield, NJ

Grades 6—8




Maxson Middle School students care about:

Their community and their culture, and
changing the world

Students at Maxson Middle School are no strangers to community involvement. In the first years of the PACES project, they enlisted the services and supplies of local landscapers in an ambitious project that beautified the grounds of their school as well as that of a neighboring school. Proud of its heritage, the student body, which is 99 percent African-American, found a way to preserve its students and its community for posterity through the  “Quilts as Life Artifacts” project.


Quilts have had an important role in African-American history; many of the stations in the Underground Railroad disguised the directions to the next stop through intricate quilt designs. After two social studies classes learned about quilts, their significance and connection with African-American identity, the students designed and made their own quilt panels that represented themselves, their families, their school or Plainfield. All of the panels were then sewn together to create a large quilt that represented both the Maxson community and the Plainfield community as a whole. Copies of the quilt were distributed to local businesses so they too could display the town’s heritage. Social studies teacher Brenda Noble and social worker Zelda Spence, who were instrumental in this interdisciplinary project, both agreed that project had whetted student interest in history and fostered pride in their town and their families.

 

Training its students to take an active role in civic issues, Maxson also participated in “Project Citizen,” a program developed by The Center for Civic Education. In social studies classes, students learned what constitutes public policy and practiced ways to change it within their own community. Working as a team, they identified a community need or problem, researched the decided topic and came up with multiple solutions. Finally, the students developed an action plan to correct this issue/need and presented it to their local government. The goal of the project was not to solve this particular issue, but to teach students the steps that they would later replicate when they wanted to address an issue of importance. Social studies teacher Cole Kleitsch said that students learned much from going through the process and developing their organizational and presentation skills. In fact, students so overtly expressed enthusiasm for the process and their satisfaction from finding “their voice” that it seemed as if another Barack Obama was in the making. Clearly, the Maxson students felt as if they had the power “to change the world.”

 

Get these lesson plans:
  • “Quilts as Life Artifacts”

    Core Ethical Values addressed:     Respect, cooperation

    Curriculum Connections:      Visual Arts; Language Arts Literacy; Mathematics; Social Studies

  • “Project Citizen”

    Core Ethical Values addressed:  Civic-mindedness, respect, responsibility

    Curriculum Connections:  Language Arts; Social Studies; World Languages; Technology