Service day offers fulfilling weekend

Each year, Hopkins students, alumni, faculty, staff and non-affiliates come together to help serve the greater Baltimore community. President’s Day of Service (PDOS), began as a freshman orientation event 16 years ago and has grown since the advent of President Ronald J. Daniels’ tenure to a service event that encompasses thousands of volunteers.

This year, I decided to volunteer with one of my student groups, the Taiwanese American Students Association (TASA). After congregating in the Recreation Center with the rest of the PDOS volunteers and listening to rousing speeches by Daniels and several representatives from the Center for Social Concern, I headed to the Hopkins Henderson School with about 15 other executive board and freshman board members from TASA. 30 minutes and two wrong addresses later, we finally arrived at the school, ready to beautify it!

Hopkins Henderson School is the result of a partnership between Hopkins and the Elmer A. Henderson School. The partnership will create opportunities for Baltimore City students to take advantage of small class sizes, various enriching Hopkins bodies (the Center for Talented Youth, Peabody Institute, Athletics Department, Center for Research and Reform in Education, etc.) and will also provide teaching fellowships to qualified applicants from the Hopkins School of Education.

One main benefit of the partnership is the building of a new, $53 million, 90,000 square foot facility for the school to be housed in.

The school will serve kids in grades K-8 and will also house the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Early Childhood Center, to help kids start learning from a young age. The center takes kids as young as two months old!

However, the new school has not yet finished construction and students are currently being taught in the original Elmer A. Henderson building — a smaller, much older facility. That is where TASA and PDOS came into the picture.

TASA was tasked with helping to beautify the playground area of the older facility that is currently being used from the program. Several Hopkins alumni working as teachers at the school, along with the school’s gym teacher and a Hopkins School of Education supervisor, came along to help direct us in our efforts.

Most of our work centered on painting the blacktop to create fun spaces for kids to play in. By the end of the day, we had painted two hopscotch boards, a four square board and two boards for the gym teacher to use in class!

I had an amazing, fulfilling time serving with my fellow TASA members and getting to know the freshmen a little better while also learning about the amazing partnership between the Elmer A. Henderson School and Hopkins. I can’t wait to help serve the Baltimore community with my fellow Blue Jays again at PDOS next year!