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Education

The Council

Challenge Day is a unique experience through which students and community leaders become more meaningfully engaged in making campus life safer, creating a positive learning environment and establishing better communications among students and their teachers. It achieves its goals through a daylong sequence of powerful, high-energy exercises and reflections in which participants talk about their values and aspirations, while setting new goals that will shape their campus life.

Darlington: HDLS Leadership Academy

The Leadership Academy consisted of 3 two-week sessions for three different groups. There was a group of 20 middle school male students, a group of 20 middle school female students, and a group of 15 co-ed students that were 15-17 years old. Each session consisted of education in various topics, guest speakers, community service, and social/communication opportunities.

Here is a summary:

DeLIvering Compassion

More than half of the students in a typical classroom have experienced some form of abuse or neglect, encountered a violent crime, or experienced another traumatic event. Trauma can impact brain development and impair a student's ability to learn and/or control behavior and social functioning. Trauma can also significantly affect a student's overall performance at school contributing to poor attendance and an increase in behavioral problems that lead to suspension or expulsion, and a higher dropout rate.

Détente

The Détente capstone group’s goal was to create a sustainable relationship between Bob Jones University (BJU) and East North Street Academy (ENSA), an elementary school located a few blocks from BJU. ENSA has a complex mixture of students with over 50% of the student body being African American and nearly 20% being Hispanic. Members of Détente met with staff at BJU to present their idea of encouraging a relationship between their students and the students, families and faculty at ENSA through a mentoring and tutoring program.

DiverCity

Members of DiverCity spent time at the Greenville County Boys and Girls Club. Children ranging from preteens through older teenagers participate in after school programs at the club. The DiverCity capstone group recognized that every child spending time there was African American. The composition of their own capstone group was a owerful example for the children; the students were impressed to see such a diverse group of adults hanging out and enjoying each other.

Diversity 101

Diversity 101 team members’ mission is to take the complex subject of diversity management and simplify the concept to a high school level. Partnering with the Bridge Builder Foundation (a youth leadership organization), Diversity 101 will host 50 young leaders at the Youth Leadership Summit (YLS) on August 27th, 2011. During YLS, Diversity 101 will introduce these young leaders to diversity management through fun student exercises, interactive case studies and open group discussion.

DLIbrarians

DLIbrarians recognizes that access to books is one of the most successful ways to improve the reading achievement of children. However, according to the U.S. Department of Education, up to 61% of low‐income families do not have any books for their kids at home. Little Free Libraries (LFL) play an essential role by providing 24/7 access to books (and encouraging a love of reading!) in areas where books are scarce.

DLI-ted to Bike

DLI-ted to Bike’s project is designed to help fifteen at-risk middle schoolers to get into the flow of “bike-friendly” Greenville. The middle schoolers will be from the Sterling Community, a neighborhood that is in transition. The DLI project will help provide these students with a more intimate overview of biking, better nutrition habits; and explain how to avoid poor eating and how a lack of exercise can lead to heath problems such as obesity, diabetes and a shortened life span.

DLI Twenty Sixers

The goal of the DLI Twenty Sixers project is to provide children with autism an opportunity to interact with typically-developing children and to provide typically-developing students with an opportunity to learn about autism, to develop a relationship with an affected child, to be exposed to a potential career path and to create a sustainable project model for the Autism Academy.

The Dollar $cholars

Everyday 7,000 students drop out of high school and graduation rates continue to decrease. The Dollar Scholars project focuses on providing financial literacy for young people in middle school. Middle school students were chosen because students between the 6th and 8th grades are the most open to new information and are the most adaptive. The idea is to have young people focus on financial literacy so as they get older they can make wiser decisions.