Creating a Culture of Service:


How OES cultivates a passion in students to find their power for good


S


eniors Lexy Tracy and Arianna Rahimian can identify their first encounters with power for good: classroom discussions with fellow


Kindergarteners. Colleagues, activists, and good friends, Tracy and Rahimian are both OES Lifers, having matriculated in 2005. “At OES, from the very start there is a huge aspect of service,” explains Tracy. “It’s addressed in every class you’re taking and in everything you’re doing,” Rahimian confirms.


Even at age five, Tracy and Rahimian already knew what it meant to give back to their communities. Rahimian’s mother consistently emphasized the importance of serving others, while Tracy’s family included service and being thankful among their core values.


Rahimian has so many different service endeavors happening simultaneously, it’s hard to keep track. When asked what’s on her plate this year, she says: “I tutor through AASK [Aardvarks Advocate Skills and Knowledge] in the winter and the spring; and I tutor in the Lower School for fourth grade students. I have


Beaverton OES Leadership Team [formerly AASK Student Advisory Council]. I’m doing a Planned Parenthood group again. I’ll probably go back to Portland State and be on the Girls’ Council at the Center for Women’s Leadership —that was a lot of fun. Oh, and I started a nonprofit.”


When queried further about the organization she founded, Rahimian explains, “I started a Young Refugee Integration Initiative. Our goal is to help local refugee high school students with cultural transition work and academic support.” She also enlisted the support of Tracy and their volleyball teammates. Te team hosted a fundraiser last fall to purchase home restart kits with items like pots and pans, bedding, shower curtains, and other items necessary for moving into a new home.


While Tracy is active in the Upper School’s Midwinter Madness committee raising money for multiple community organizations, her work doesn’t stop there. Her list of ongoing projects includes OES’s Service Learning Advisory Council, the AASK tutoring program, and Youth Ending Slavery [YES]. Rahimian and Tracy founded OES’s chapter of YES, a Portland-based student-run nonprofit that combats modern-day slavery and empowers youth to be advocates for change. Te two friends had to secure approval from the city-wide chapter to establish the organization’s presence at OES.


Lexy Tracy and Arianna Rahimian (both ’17) at the 2016 Walk to End Slavery. Photo by Hannah Ginsberg


24 Oregon Episcopal School


Additionally, for this year’s Upper School Winterim, Rahimian will attend the National Service Learning Conference for


the second year in a row. Tracy will travel to Nepal to help local youth rebuild part of their community destroyed by a 2015 earthquake.


As OES Upper Schoolers, the students are required to complete two service learning projects and 80 service hours before they graduate (60 off-campus, 20 on-campus). Tey, and many others, have far exceeded those requirements.


FFF


Kristen Haferbecker, Annie Russell, and Robin Schauffler serve as OES’s three Divisional Service Learning Coordinators (Lower, Middle, and Upper, respectively). Along with Head Chaplain Phillip Craig, they comprise a team whose charge is to empower students in all 15 grades at OES with ways to give back to local and global communities. Haferbecker is in her first year as the Lower School Service Learning Coordinator. Drawing on the National Youth Leadership Council’s “K–12 Service Learning Standards for Quality Practice,” Haferbecker developed a service learning continuum that the team now uses as a guideline.


“Te beautiful part about any continuum,” Haferbecker explains, “is that you can find yourself on it, so it honors the place where you are and it gives you insight into how you could move yourself or your students along the continuum in different areas.”


“It’s good to have a framework and language to use as we think through what our programs are and how we can improve them,” Russell offers. Although she is new to the service learning team this year, Russell expresses appreciation for the process thus far. “I’m having a lot of important and compelling conversations about the way we ask students to engage with service at the school.”


Both Haferbecker and Russell have high praise for Schauffler, their experienced colleague. Schauffler joined OES as the Upper School


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