Courageous Conversations

Every week, Orchard House dedicates a period toteaching CORE, a curriculum focused on Connections,Openness, Resilience, and Engagement. CORE encourages girls to establish connections within the world to identify potential areas of interest in measurable acts of service.

Shortly after the beginning of the school year, students are assigned to a Base Group, composed of girls from each grade level. The purpose of these groups is to work together toward fulfilling a base group project selected by the group’s 8th grader. In the process, girls are exposed to team-building and service. They pull from their CORE lessons to bring these projects to fruition.

During the 2017-2018 school year, projects ranged from learning dances from around the world, to animation, to organizing a drive for menstrual products for homeless women. Students presented their projects to an audience on Orchard House’s well-attended Grandparents’ and Grandfriends’ Day. They related their processes for identifying a project focus and implementing a plan of action.

In alignment with CORE, OHS Outreach Coordinator, Casey Freeman, invited speakers to share with students their stories about Richmond-based organizations serving our community.

From Suzanne Weaver (Parent ‘20), who recounted her experience completing the Ironman race on the fiercely competitive Hawaiian course, to Vanessa Diamond, director and co-founder of HandsOn Greater Richmond, which connects individuals to volunteer opportunities, students learned valuable lessons about goal setting, setbacks, human connection, and volunteering. Most importantly, they learned that they can offer help or services now, as part of who they are and what they have to offer.

Part of CORE‘s curriculum is concentrated on food insecurity—lack of reliable access to nutritious food.

For these lessons, OHS 7th graders visited Kroger to research costs to feed a family of four for a month, while Duron Chavis, Community Engagement Coordinator at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, talked with the 6th and 7th grade classes about urban gardening. Students then volunteered in the community gardens at the Neighborhood Resource Center of Greater Fulton (NRC), which operates a biweekly food pantry and offers youth cooking classes and daily free healthy prepared meals for community members 18 and under.

“There is immeasurable value in a personally engaged, hands-on experience with an organization you’re building a relationship with, as opposed to a more abstract classroom experience,” Freeman says. “We learn by doing.”

Math and 6th grade homeroom teacher Janine Russo recognizes the shared value between the NRC and OHS, as well as a chance to teach our students to look for opportunities in their own communities first before seeking them globally.

“We’re both trying to design sustainable opportunities for people to grow, and through service, there’s an awareness of a bigger story.”