Emerson World Languages and Cultures Magnet School

Description

Emerson Magnet is a grade 1-5 elementary school in Westerville, Ohio. It is a school of choice and families choose to enter the lottery (students chosen at random) to enter the program. We have a diverse population of students from all socio-economic levels, ethnic backgrounds and abilities. An important part of our focus at Emerson is helping students to become citizens of the world. This means contributing in real ways to our community. This takes the shape of engaging Service Learning projects which enable our students to move beyond textbooks to real world learning and empowerment. One of the major projects for our school has been the Children’s Safe Drinking Water Project. Did you know that more than 4,000 children die EVERY DAY from diseases caused by unsafe drinking water? Our students decided to do what they can to make a difference. The Emerson Magnet Children's Safe Drinking Water Project is a school wide service learning project designed to raise awareness and funding to provide PUR packets (Proctor and Gamble) to purify the water for people who do not have access to clean drinking water. Through the course of this project, students have been involved in extensive research and problem solving. They designed and created labels for bottles of donated water highlighting the issue and presented to students, parents, faculty and staff in the greater Westerville City Schools District and Community. When presenting to these groups, the students make available the repackaged water to the audience. Their audiences have donated approximately 4thousand dollars thus far with many more presentations scheduled as the message reaches farther into our community. This project is growing in size and has presented a rich and relevant learning opportunity for our students across all grade levels. In the fall a representative from Proctor and Gamble came to present to our students and informed them that their efforts have provided safe drinking water to over 300 children for a year. At this point we have contributed enough to save 3 times that number. Our staff and students are not content to leave it at that. Our students presented at the city council ofWesterville and were able to have the first annual World Water Day inWesterville. They are currently working on getting the Children’s Safe Drinking Water Project added to the Kroger Round Up program and the Water Company’s round up program in order to allow people to donate with ease and on a regular basis. In addition, Emerson was invited to present at the Ohio Department of Education Global Instituted in August. Here Emerson students and staff presented not only the Water Project, but also were able to share an additional project (My Hero) where Emerson partnered with schools across the U.S., Canada, Slovenia, and Russia. Our students and staff are teaching educators from acrossOhio. At this conference, Adrian Allison, the Associate Superintendent, Center for Education Reform and Strategic Initiatives for the Ohio Department of Education, describedEmersonMagnet School as an "Exemplar" for other schools inOhio.

Because of our commitment to our community both home and abroad, Emerson was recently recognized as the number one elementary school in the State ofOhio for Community Service by The League Worldwide. Emerson ranked number 10 in the nation among all schools. We are creating students who are ready to succeed as citizens of the world... invested in making it a better place.