Community Service Projects

Tilden students are active members of their community, undertaking service projects regularly. Here are some of our recent projects!

April 22, 2010: Earth Day Clean-Up

Tilden School celebrated Earth Day with a clean-up: Kindergarten students collected litter at Dakota Place Park, 1st grade cleaned up near the school and First Lutheran Church building, 2nd and 3rd grades picked up debris in the alley between Dakota and Genesee streets, and 4th and 5th grades cleaned up at Hiawatha Park, to which they regularly walk for PE. We lost count of all the bags of litter collected, but it was a lot! The most common items collected were cigarette butts (the children did wear gloves!)

One third grader commented, “A way to make the Earth a better place would be everyone picking up after themselves.”

March 2010: Tilden School Adopts Dakota Place Park

by the Tilden 5th Grade Class

Tilden School has officially adopted the beautiful Dakota Place Park, and we, the fifth grade class, are enjoying being park stewards! We will visit the park weekly to clean up trash, pull weeds, and remove invasive species. Before the end of the school year, we will teach the fourth graders how to care for the park so they can be the park stewards next year.
	We would like to thank MARK SINDELL of GGLO for designing such a beautiful green space for the West Seattle community and for all of the many small mammals, birds, and insects that are native to the area. Mark gave us a tour of the park to explain its history, design, and plant life.
We would also like to thank all of the kind donors for giving us the tools we needed to begin our stewardship project. Thanks to JUNCTION TRUE VALUE, MCLENDON HARDWARE WHITE CENTER, and WEST SEATTLE NURSERY. Your generosity is truly appreciated!
	Come visit the extraordinary Dakota Place Park, and bring all your friends and Fido on a leash!

February 2010: Penny Drive for Haiti

Our penny drive for the earthquake victims in Haiti was a wonderful success. Through the generosity and thoughtfulness of our Tilden students and their families, we were able to send $772.85 to Partners in Health to support that organization’s continued work in Haiti. All those pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and dollars really added up!

Our local branch of Viking Bank generously waived their coin-counting fee, so every penny went to support the recovery effort in Haiti.

December 2009: Giving Tree

Southwest Youth and Family Services asked the Tilden community to provide holiday gifts for needy families in the West Seattle area. Tilden families and faculty eagerly contributed, bringing some holiday cheer to 100 local families.

December 2009: Scholastic Reading Challenge

Tilden's third, fourth, and fifth grade students read 258 books for Scholastic's ClassroomsCare reading challenge.
	Scholastic matched that number, donating 258 books to children in need.

September, 2010: Habitat Restoration in the West Duwamish Greenbelt

Tilden's 5th grade class volunteered right here in West Seattle for the Nature Consortium's Urban Forest Restoration Project. Students and faculty mulched and later planted Noble Fir trees.
	Mark Tomkeiwicz (aka Buphalo), Nature Consortium's Restoration Project Coordinator, did a truly outstanding job incorporating lessons on the West Duwamish Greenbelt watershed and ecosystem, covering topics such as biodiversity, invasive vs. native plant species, the water cycle, and more.
Students found the whole experience both fun and rewarding, and they hope to return to the area soon.

February 2009: Scholastic Reading Challenge Follow-up

Donating 500 Books to Treehouse!

Because Tilden's 4th and 5th grade students read 100 books for Scholastic's ClassroomsCare project, they were eligible to enter another Scholastic contest, the Care Where You Are Sweepstakes, to win 500 books to donate to a local organization. Tilden's 5th grade class is one of 200 winners out of 16,000 entries!

The 5th graders write: After researching local nonprofit organizations, we found out about the foster kids at Treehouse, and decided this was the right place for the 500 books. Our class thought Treehouse could use some of the books for tutoring foster children, and put some of the books in its Wearhouse for the foster kids to choose and take home.

It makes us feel really good to be able to help foster children, and donate books that they could read and use to learn. The books we’re donating include 100 preschool and Kindergarten books, 100 Kindergarten and 1st grade books, 100 2nd and 3rd grade books, 100 4th through 6th grade books, and 100 books for grades 7 and up. We hope that Treehouse foster kids enjoy using these books!

Here's a photo of some of the 5th grade with Anne Mladenovic (parent of two former Tilden students!) from Treehouse, who came to pick up the students' donation.

December 2008: Singing for Golden Fellowship

The all-school Tilden Chorus sang for a luncheon gathering of very appreciative members of the Golden Fellowship of First Lutheran Church of West Seattle.
	The children sang beautiful rounds, and Lou Magor encouraged and accompanied the chorus on "When You Wish Upon a Star", "Mr. Clown", "Sleigh Ride", and the Ks did Dr. Seuss's "Tooth" song! Everone had a delightful time!

November/December, 2008: Sister Schools

Tilden Students collected new and gently used clothes, toiletries, school supplies, books, and toys to share with students in Uganda, through Sister Schools's program. See the article the students wrote for the West Seattle Blog.
	In addition, students held a penny drive, with the goal of providing a roof on the girls' shower at Mukono Day and Boarding School in Uganda. To accomplish this, they needed to raise $500. By the time they ended the penny drive, students had collected $781.92—there will even be enough for solar-powered lights for the bathrooms!

Spring, 2008 Food Drive:
Replace Hunger with Love, because Love + Food = Life

In April, the Tilden community collected more than half a ton of food to donate to the West Seattle Food Bank. Sponsored by the 1st and 4th graders, and ably led by Taya, the food drive was an overwhelming success. The students chose the theme: Replace Hunger with Love, because Love + Food = Life.
	As they collected, weighed, and totaled the donations each day, the students practiced estimation, addition, subtraction, and graphing skills, making this service project not only socially valuable, but educational as well!
In addition to all the food we collected, Crown Pacific Fine Foods (the Ataee Family) donated at least 5000 pounds of food on behalf of Tilden School. Altogether, almost 3 tons of food will be matched on a percentage basis by the Feinstein Challenge, a nationwide program to increase awareness and raise money to fight hunger!

Earth Day, 2008: Neighborhood Cleanup

The whole school celebrated Earth Day on April 22nd with a neighborhood cleanup. Grades teamed up to tackle streets and alleys adjacent to the school. Unfortunately, they found a lot of trash. The students collected and bagged it, and take pride in having made their neighborhood cleaner!

2007-2008: Sister Schools in Africa

Spring, 2007: Eco Encore

After attending IslandWood’s School Overnight Program, Tilden’s 5th grade class wanted to do something regionally to help the environment, so they decided to support Eco Encore, an organization that collects used books, CDs, DVDs, videos, and computer software, and resells them to help fund organizations dedicated to helping the Puget Sound environment, while increasing awareness of reuse as a vital practice for resource conservation and waste reduction.
	To spread the news, 5th grade students put an announcement in our school newsletter, hung colorful posters on campus, put fliers on their neighbors’ doors, and much more. In addition, they designed colorful collection bins from reused boxes and scrap paper, placing them in the hallway. Soon these bins were filling up daily with items for Eco Encore, and the 5th grade classroom became crowded with stacks of used CDs, DVDs, books, and software.
5th graders counted incoming items daily. Their goal was to collect 500 items. They thought that was reasonable, as the school’s student body consisted of 88 students, but after two weeks of collecting items, the total was 728 items ($415.55 in value)!
	The 5th graders understand that to live more sustainably, we need to "close the loop" and buy used rather than new items, to save natural resources. They encourage you, next time you’re shopping for books, CDs, DVDs, or software, to go to www.ecoencore.org and choose an online store to purchase used items.