Care Infinitely More

Service and Social Justice

Central to our Episcopal identity is a commitment to respecting the dignity of every human being, both within and outside our community. St. Patrick’s is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in all aspects of our program and community – and we find strength in this diversity. Our students learn to embrace a spirit of compassion and understanding, engage in civic responsibility and global citizenship, and develop a social justice framework.

At St. Patrick’s, we invite all students to engage with the larger world. We believe that understanding the complex challenges and needs of our local, national, and global communities is part of the moral and spiritual development of the young people in our care. Service learning allows students to share their blessings with others while developing empathy and an open heart.

Service Learning Curriculum

PK3/PK4 Community Service

One lasting image that captures the importance of service activity at St. Patrick’s is the arrival at school of our four-year-old PK students, each clutching a vegetable on the day each month when they will scrub and chop the items to make soup that older students and their parents will serve to homeless people that evening. Our three-year-old students prepare trail mix that day, which we call Helping Hands Day.

Even with children at such young ages, St. Patrick’s strives to find a way to have them understand a social issue in hopes that both their understanding and their response to the issue will grow over time.

Lower School Community Service

Lower School service takes place within the context of the classroom, as an extension of academic experiences, religion classes, or schoolwide service initiatives.

Examples of such service include:

making sandwiches, soup, and trail mix for the award-winning Grate Patrol program. Students prepare food in the classrooms, and families and teachers help distribute meals twice a month with the Salvation Army,
collecting medical supplies and funds in support of school fees, lunches, and teacher salaries for our sister school in Haiti,
conducting book and video drives to supply Children’s Hospital with entertainment resources for patients,
sending care packages to U.S. servicemen and women abroad, and
participating in the "Souper Bowl" canned drive for St. Philip’s Food Distribution Center around the time of the Super Bowl.

Middle School Service Learning

Students participate in a either service-learning class or a religion class that incorporates service as part of the academic experience. The classes complement classroom learning about critical social issues with experiential learning by providing students opportunities to serve in the larger community. Student examine the root causes of hunger, homelessness, or poverty while learning about local and global organizations that combat these problems. Through grant-writing, website design, interviews, presentations, fundraising, and reflection, students learn what it takes to make a positive difference in the world.

Service learning initiatives include:

participation in our annual Gifts for Goods Fair,
interviewing local nonprofits and using website design,
engaging in service projects with organizations like D.C. Central Kitchen, Martha’s Table, Lisner-Louise-Dickson-Hurt Home for Seniors, So Others May Eat (SOME), and Iona Senior Services.

Partnerships

At St. Patrick's, we live our values of service, equity, and social justice and we encourage community members to recognize that we are part of something much larger than ourselves. Our four-decade partnership with St. Etienne de Bateau in Haiti, our summer enrichment program with Horizons Greater Washington, and our participation in the Grate Patrol program are hallmark programs of our school community.

Grate Patrol

Grate Patrol

Grate Patrol, an effort to feed the hungry in Washington, D.C. organized by the Salvation Army, is an important service opportunity in the life of St. Patrick’s. Grate Patrol dispatches a van stocked with food for distribution to the homeless and hungry throughout the city every night of the year. On a rotating basis and with the help of Room Parents, all students in Grades 1 through 8 make sandwiches and bag cookies and snacks multiple times during the school year for distribution on the Grate Patrol van. Nursery, PK, and Kindergarten students contribute by making soup and trail mix.

Horizons Greater Washington

Horizons Greater Washington

Since 2009, St. Patrick’s has partnered with Horizons Greater Washington (HGW), part of a national network that provides a summer-based intervention to help students from low-income families continue learning at a time when they might otherwise experience a decline in their academic development. Each summer, cohorts of students in rising Grades 1 through 9—from our D.C. Public Schools partner Bancroft Elementary in Mount Pleasant—spend six weeks at the Day School engaged in a mix of academic and recreational activities, often under the instruction of St. Patrick’s teachers. Horizons students return every summer for close to a decade, and we commit to each family we enroll for that long. Many St. Patrick’s alumni serve as Horizons Assistant Teachers, or HATs.

Learn more about Horizons Greater Washington

St. Etienne de Buteau, Haiti

St. Etienne de Buteau, Haiti

Since 1979, St. Patrick’s has maintained a relationship with St. Etienne Church and School in Haiti. Across the decades, countless members of the St. Patrick’s community—parishioners, faculty and staff, parents, students, and alumni—have contributed to this partnership through visits, cultural exchanges, educational opportunities, and fund drives.

Our Haiti partnership is one of our most cherished friendships and an integral part of our strategic work to make St. Patrick’s a more globally conscious community.

Community Service Clubs

The Community Service Clubs are a backbone of the annual Gifts for Good, St. Patrick's alternative holiday gift fair. Founded in 2006, the fair reflects St. Patrick’s commitment to serving local and global communities. Students, teachers, and parents work together, in the true spirit of the holidays, to offer token gifts in exchange for donations to organizations or causes that are important to them.

Through our purpose-built campus, the MacArthur Community Service clubs grew out of St. Patrick’s commitment to community service and the MacArthur service learning and health curriculums. Throughout the school year, the clubs study social issues, which provides context for their service and fundraising efforts.

Grade 7 students learn about service during a trimester long class. Students learn about and explore ways to address genuine community needs through academic and skill based knowledge. Areas of focus have included the marginalization of both the elderly and people with disabilities.

All three grade levels incorporate the service learning steps of: investigation, planning, action, reflection, and demonstration in creating any school year fundraising or for Gifts for Good booths. Past booths and social issue causes have included: St. Etienne’s medical drive, “You Can Make a Difference” food drive, Covenant House, Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, Honor Flight, Habitat for Humanity, Girls Rising, St. Baldrick’s, Foundation, United for Puerto Rico, International Orangutan Foundation, DC Diaper Bank, Sasha Bruce House, and The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

These and similar experiences cultivate in our students, and across all members of our community, looking beyond our own needs, taking thoughtful, positive action to improve our world, and habits of service.

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