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Rancho Sespe Housing Development

Rancho Sespe is a community of 500 people, living in apartments adjacent to the Cesar Chavez community room. This gathering hall has become a center of activity for students from preschool through secondary school when it suddenly transforms into a Full-Circle school on weekdays and transforms back again at the end of the week.

The isolated HUD housing project serves as a home for agricultural families but now also houses families displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Students eagerly attend as a respite from their daily lives of tending younger siblings or sitting in the apartment. In the process, they develop new academic skills, goals, and purposes for their lives and an awareness of their potential to use their talents to serve their local and global community. Year-round evening classes bolster their learning.

While preparing their own newspaper and service projects around sacrifice, students presented firefighter Allan Perry with fruit baskets to reward fire fighters for the sacrifices they make in the line of duty.

A FirstFive grant helped provide a portion of the expenses needed for a year-round preschool services at Rancho Sespe for the first time in 2006. The children who attended had access to integrated education with all-new original Full-Circle Learning materials, linked with its in-home bilingual reading and music program to help caregivers reinforce students’ learning.

Teacher and parent assessments showed improvements in both social and academic skills. Parents who responded to surveys said that 95% of the students showed greater reading readiness and interest in science in as little as three months. All sites use project-based learning. These preschoolers, the Peacemakers, practiced the habit of patience through role plays, songs, reading books, 13 conflict resolution exercises, and in their academic content and service projects. They practiced patience while studying biology. They planted grass on their sod heads and watering them until they grew hair, then giving them as gifts.

While practicing the habit of Consideration, students first defined their personal mark of consideration (to family or members of the human family). They discussed ways to consider the needs of others, then extended these considerations to others in a community. They played the roles of special interest groups representing endangered species and recreation seekers. Holding a mock public hearing, they voted on how to use the land around Lake Piru based on environmental studies. They used the votes to mathematically represent their community considerations on personal blueprints. Each student created a blueprint and wrote a rationale for it. Next they presented the blueprints to the park ranger, who invited them to assist him with a service project cleaning up the land around the lake and enjoying a swim afterward.

Their habits-of-heart came into play the next day. After cleaning the lake and wading in the water, one girl stepped into a drop-off. Two of her classmates struggled to save her, even though they were pulled into the water too. They would not quit in their efforts to calm her and save her. They called their teacher, who had the students form a human chain to pull the girl out of the sinkhole. The two students who would not give up will receive a True Heroes award for exemplifying the Habits of Giving traits learned this summer: Sacrifice, Consideration, Determination, Compassion and Integrity.

The project won an award for advancing the human rights of the migrant worker, because it recognizes the right of all individuals to develop their talents in service to humanity. These students are learning the joy of serving others.

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