Special to the Herald

Thanks to funding from this year’s Spark Grant, third-grade teachers Lisa Davis and Regina Bilfulco are collaborating once again to provide their students with opportunities to impact their community, to learn from one another, and to connect with others they would not normally have the opportunity to connect with.

According to the Rhode Island Foundation’s website, “Students learn best when given real-life opportunities to engage in academic content in meaningful and relevant ways. And classroom teachers know best how to provide those opportunities. That’s the thinking behind the Carter Spark Grants program. Conceived of and funded by Letitia and the late John Carter, Spark Grants are small, flexible grants designed to give classroom teachers with innovative ideas the resources they need to ‘spark’ a love of learning.”

Davis and Bilfulco, who each began their teaching career in 2003, worked together for a time at Edgewood Highland Elementary School. As past recipients of the grant, Davis, now a teacher at Glen Hills Elementary School, and Bilfulco, still a teacher at Edgewood Highland, have worked hard to provide their students with meaningful experiences and connections that extend beyond the classroom.

This year, the two will be connecting their students via pen pal letters and a series of meet-up opportunities, through which they will work on community service projects and generational experiences.

The first get-together took place on Feb. 24 at Glen Hills, where the students were introduced to each other and participated in a series of get-to-know-you activities. The guests from Edgewood Highland were also taken on a tour of Glen Hills.

From there, the students worked together on a dozen or so different craft activities being created for a sale to be held at Glen Hills during the school lunch periods. The proceeds from the sale would then be donated to Hasbro Children’s Hospital.

The crafts included motivational bookmarks bearing messages such as “Stay Positive” and “Dream Big,” painted flower pots, painted wooden birdhouses – which were hand crafted by Davis’ father – painted rocks, tooth fairy boxes, bracelets, games and more.

“When the students were coming from Edgewood to Glen Hills, they said that they saw many differences, such as the fact that it started to look more rural, they saw turkeys, the houses were different and there were not as many businesses,” Davis said. “It’s important to us that they understand what makes a community and that they are part of a wider community. We also want them to be a productive member of their community and to know what that means.”

As the students rotated through the various stations, finding a spot at a table as one opened up, they partnered with friends they’d only just met and communicated with solely through writing until that day. Despite that, it wasn’t clear to anyone on the outside looking in which students were from which school. It seemed as if the students had been together as classmates all year long.

As Davis checked in with the group partway through the craft session, she praised them for their hard work.

“You are doing a great job,” she said. “I see so much creativity.”

When she asked for a show of hands as to who was having fun so far, every hand in the room went up.

She talked to the students about focusing on the quality of their handiwork so that it would sell when the time came.

“They also had to do persuasive essays that they read to the other classrooms leading up to this sale,” she said. “They had to talk about what a community service project is, what crafts would be for sale, how they could use the items being sold and where the money would be going.”

Once the sale was complete, representatives from Hasbro Children’s Hospital would be meeting with the students to collect the donation amount and to let them know how it would be used and who would be benefiting from it.

Going forward, the students will be connecting again several times in the coming weeks. They will be adding in an intergenerational component to their future meetings as they head to the senior center in mid-March for a get-to-know-you session, conversation and lunch, and then again for Earth Day activities with the two schools and the senior center joining together at Glen Hills in April.