Guardian Angels students pave way to City of God with good deeds
Joe Kohn of The Michigan Catholic
Published February 23, 2007
Photos by Joe Kohn | The Michigan Catholic
Students from the fourth-grade art club at Guardian Angels School in Clawson helped decorate the paper bricks for the City of God project, which is at the top of the school hallway. |
Guardian Angels first-graders Mackenzie Kernen (left) and Laurel Krause (middle), helped by mother Missy Kernen, make cookies to send to U.S. troops in Iraq. The good deed was one of hundreds that students at the Clawson school recorded in their "City of God" project. | Clawson First-grader Lauren Kowal doesn't mind getting her hands dirty to do something nice. When her first-grade class at Guardian Angels School made cookies to send to U.S. military troops in Iraq, she was up to her elbows in cookie dough.
"Our hands got really dirty (with the dough)," Lauren said. "We were wearing gloves, and they got so dirty that we had to use bigger gloves, and they were so big that they were falling off our hands."
At Guardian Angels, Lauren shares a lot in common with the other students at the school they roll up their sleeves a lot to help others in need.
How much?
This year, visitors to the school need only walk the hallways to see a list of hundreds of good deeds performed by the students throughout the year. The school this year is taking part in the "City of God" project. Every time a student is seen doing a good deed either by a parent at home, or by a teacher at school that student can be given a paper "brick," which is then taped up in the school's hallway.
The result is a wall, hundreds upon hundreds of "bricks" tall and wide, to the City of God. It allows students to see the sum of their good deeds and encourages them to do more.
"I see a lot of kids stopping and looking and reading the bricks," says art teacher Joyce Coyne, who with the assistance of her student art clubs is orchestrating the visual in the hallway. "They get really excited when they see something that they've done up there, and they feel good about themselves because they're helping to build the City of God."
One project that helped children earn bricks for city's wall was the first-graders cookie baking. The young students also wrote Valentines to accompany the cookies, which would reach the troops by Valentine's Day.
First-grader Marisa Drinkwater of Guardian Angels School in Clawson decorates a Valentines Day greeting for a U.S. military troop in Iraq. | "I writed, 'Happy Valentines day. Hope you enjoy the cookies,'" said David Clipfell, a first grader.
But their good deed was accompanied by many.
Bricks along Guardian Angel's school hallway gave insight into the many ways young people could help their peers, their parents and their siblings.
"I mowed someone else's lawn," read one brick.
"I loaned a friend my pencil when his broke," stated another.
Another: "I babysat for free."
To illustrate the fact that all goodness comes through God, student's names were not written on the bricks.
"The idea is that Jesus knows who did the good deed, and we are just building the City of God brick by brick, stone by stone," Coyne said.
Bricks weren't the only things making up the wall, either. Each time the school made a large-scale effort blood drives, giving tree projects, canned food drives, etc. a large picture was drawn and colored and placed amid the bricks in the wall.
For students, seeing the pictures meant motivation but only because they knew what was behind each picture.
"The City of God encourages us to create not just in school with our pictures, but in real life for everything, doing good and helping others," said eighth-grader Steve Barch. "People want to build it big and build it fast, so they do good stuff.
Barch's class earned a special picture for their role in helping elderly people at a funeral. While inside Guardian Angels Church, the weather was icy, so his class went out and scraped windshields of the people inside the funeral.
And if other students didn't see this act of charity, they could certainly see the bricks in the wall that represented it. And whether they were getting their hands dirty or cold, their example was in the school hallway as a light for others.
"If you see a friend's brick, you might say, 'I want to be like my friend!'" said sixth-grader Abbie Harbourne. "And that might encourage you to do something good."
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