Having a pleasing view of the outside of a school is important to Dana Road and they have decided to work on beautification with a little help from AmeriCorps.
An AmeriCorps team will be helping out at Dana Road for the next seven weeks.
Jennifer Norman, guidance counselor at Dana Road said they would be working with intervention, mentoring, tutoring, school beautification and helping to implement the “Leader in Me” habits.
“We had to apply, and I think we won because it’s our first year having a ‘Leader in Me’ program at the school,” she said.
Nicole Shultz, the AmeriCorps team leader said they would focus on making the school look more pleasing to the eye. She said they will be painting some murals and working outside.
There are seven team members in team Delta 3, and team members have their own job including a media representative who handles Twitter, Facebook and press releases. They also have a recruiter who goes around to schools in the area and tries to recruit students and they have a vehicle safety officer.
“This is not our first project as a team,” Shultz said.
They will have a weeklong training session before beginning their project. They will learn polices and procedures of the school and they will leave on Nov. 14.
Norman said she was surprised they won.
“Usually Sherman always wins. I think we had an advantage this year because of ‘Leader in Me,’” she said.
Working with Dana Road is not the AmeriCorps team’s first project. They have been doing many projects around the country.
“We’ve done trail-building in Kentucky for eight weeks,” she said. They also went to East Mississippi Community College to help with beautification and they worked in North Dakota where they installed energy efficient light bulbs in people’s home and built gardens.
There are 14 teams for the Corporation for National and Community Service and there are seven FEMA corps teams.
Norman said the students would get a lot out of having the team at the school. “We’re just so grateful that they’re here. Anybody that’s got an invested interest in our students we welcome them,” she said.