Service Sets Tone for TAMS Students

06:54 AM CDT on Tuesday, August 25, 2009

First-year students with the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science on Monday helped Denton teachers and parents prepare for today’s start of school.

In their first day of fall orientation, more than 200 students were sent out to seven sites across the city to volunteer for two hours in the academy’s annual Community Service Day. Projects included distributing school supplies, helping set up classrooms and cleaning school gardens

The academy is a two-year program at the University of North Texas for high school juniors and seniors. They can complete their high school requirements with a math and science emphasis and earn college credit at the same time.

“We’re getting them off immediately starting in community service. It teaches them the value of giving to others without expecting anything in return,” said TAMS Associate Dean John Allen. “That’s the focus of community service … to establish in young minds that part of what we should be doing as human beings is giving back to one another.”

Dirt covered the hands and knees of more than a dozen TAMS students as they uprooted weeds and vines, plowed and raked in Sam Houston Elementary School’s vegetable garden Monday. Some even got cuts from the sweaty work they put in.

“Even though it’s a lot of hard work, you learn to do things for others,” said student Audrey Mehrl.

Sam Houston Elementary Principal Teresa Andress said that pulling up weeds and cleaning out garden beds is not the most enjoyable work, and she appreciates that TAMS students took time to prepare the garden.

Students use the area at the back of the campus for class instruction. Andress said the volunteers’ work will make it easier for the elementary students to start planting.

Closer to the university, TAMS students hosted a back-to-school party Monday for needy young children and their families in Owsley Park. Those volunteers distributed about 75 bags of donated school supplies within 30 minutes, organizers said.

The children also had a chance to interact with TAMS students, playing games and eating cotton candy, snow cones and popcorn.

Other service projects throughout Denton included painting at parks, assisting senior citizens at Good Samaritan Village and playing games with children at Nelson Children’s Center while also sprucing up the facility. Some students were sent to two Denton schools to help teachers set up classrooms, unpack and shelve textbooks, and move desks.

The day before school starts can be busy and chaotic, said teachers at Calhoun Middle School, and TAMS students relieved them of some of their tasks in preparing for welcoming students today.

“It probably saved me a good two to three hours of prep work,” said sixth-grade teacher Amanda Sharp, who had six students set up her classroom Monday while she attended meetings. “They were able to be in the classroom and do things that I would not have been able to do.”

BRITNEY TABOR can be reached at 940-566-6876. Her e-mail address is btabor@dentonrc.com