Baldwin High School students, who are a part of the Chick-fil-A Leader Academy, hosted their spring impact project.
The Chick-Fil-A Leader Academy has been a program at Baldwin High School for four years. Students join the academy through an application process and then a committee chooses which students are accepted. The academy focuses on student led community based projects throughout the year. At the end of the year, the academy has one large spring impact project that is completed by May.
“We do leader labs every month, and those leader labs teach students how to plan an activity and how to be a leader,” said Pamela Longino, sponsor of the academy. “The motto of our group is “Lead by Impact.”
This year, the students decided to do a spring impact project to promote literacy at the Early Learning Academy. As a group, the students recognized the importance of literacy and wanted to expand the community service they had done with the Early Learning Center during Read Across America Day.
“One of the biggest problems that we have nowadays is that younger children have technological influences like cell phones and so reading gets tossed under the rug,” said Camilla Darrisaw, twelfth grader. “Reading has not been as big of a subject to students because teachers tend to focus more on math now.”
They partnered with the Old Capital Heritage Center at the Depot to do story box tours. The project was focused on four year olds and used the story boxes homed in the Brown-Stetson-Sanford house to lead interactive story times and activities. Two hundred forty preschoolers were a part of the project over a span of six days.
“If we introduce reading to young audiences, it’s more likely to stick,” said Madeline Clark, ninth grader. “This project definitely taught me leadership because I had to work with little kids and show them what to do in my activity.”
The project was split evenly between 20 high school students so each student had an activity to lead each day. They read Peter Rabbit and a Teddy Bear’s Picnic to the children while using the story boxes to create a visual environment for the story and answer questions about the setting. Then, the preschoolers had an art activity and a movement activity to go along with the stories.
“I did the art project and the movement project,” said Kaitlyn Teague, ninth grader. “We related the movement activity to Peter Rabbit and then for the Teddy Bear’s Picnic, we had coloring pages. We also had a fingerprint activity where the kids used their fingerprints and made little bunny rabbits out of them.”
Senior Emberlyn Bonner has been in the leader academy for three years and has participated in multiple community service projects similar to this one. She expressed that she has learned a lot about leading, being a part of an organization and the importance of helping her local community.
“I've had a great time. It gives a whole bunch of opportunities, such as helping the community,” said Bonner. “It’s just little things that matter to me and I want to make an impact on others.”
These students made a large impact on the Early Learning Center through carefully planned lessons and practice through earlier service projects during the school year. The Chick-Fil-A leader academy at Baldwin High School will continue to educate and nurture future leaders of the community as long as they have the opportunity.