2008-11-14 Open School

Students from St Paul’s Open School seal pouches of emergency food aid for Kids Against Hunger, a national organization that mobilizes schoolchildren to support emergency relief efforts in America and around the world.

Each pouch makes a “hot dish” for 8 made of rice, dried chicken broth and vitamins, soy protein, 7 kinds of dried vegetables.

Kids work in teams of four, each one putting a different ingredient in the bags using a large funnel. Teachers and high school-age students circulate around the Open School gym giving advice and helping out.

The gym at Open is a filled with excited shouts, laughter, and loud music. It’s almost like the students are having a party.

Tim Leone-Getten, a ELL teacher at Open, has organized this event and several more like it over the last several years at Open.

At a similar event earlier this year, Leone-Getten says, Open Students pakced 47,000 meals.

Every Open student gets in on the act, working in five, 50 minute-long shifts. Some help move boxes and load meals into a waiting tractor-trailer, but most fill, seal, and pack bags. At shift-change, the third-floor hallway is a mad traffic jam as one grade returns to class and another takes their place.

Sullaiman and Ceyairra guard the gym door. No-one gets in without hand-sanitizer and a hairnet or a hat.