News
07/17/2025
Summer 2025 SLT With Clark Richter
Learning Through Sustainability and Service
Open to all Upper School and rising Grade 9 students, joining a Summer Service Learning Team (SLT) offers a chance to connect with peers through shared purpose in service and civic engagement. Centered on sustainability education, Science faculty member Clark Richter guided students through a week of outreach, education, and reflection. The SLT traveled across nearly every borough to put their classroom learning into action. They supported local organizations including Battery Park Urban Farm, Earth Matter, Harlem Grown, and RISE Rockaway.
Participating in a SLT can be transformative for students in terms of facing challenges and self-advocacy. “I’ve really appreciated the chance to be part of the SLT,” said one student. “It’s pushed me to grow in ways I didn’t expect. I learned how to collaborate more confidently, speak up even when unsure, and support others while still managing my own responsibilities. One thing that stood out was how much trust was given to us, it made me feel more accountable and motivated while I was trying new things. The experience challenged me in the best way, and I’m grateful for it.”
From Monday, June 23, to Friday, June 27, students returned to the Dyker Heights campus to make a difference closer to home. During the morning of the first day of the SLT, the group discussed the immersive work week ahead, reinforced the necessity of hydrating and preparing for working in extreme heat, and introduced the SLT’s oral history final project. The project encouraged students to reflect on the impacts of climate change within their own community, interviewing family members and/or friends, and presenting their findings in a culminated reflection on the final day of the SLT.
The first day also included time spent beyond the classroom, taking a walking tour of Bay Ridge/Dyker Heights. The walk, Richter explained, served two purposes. First, it introduced the students to the kind of heat they would be working in (and encouraged them to think about how they should prepare themselves for the rest of the week). And second, it helped illustrate to students how experiencing a storm or major disruption can be dramatically different depending on where a person lives—even within a small geographical area.
The final project is rooted in the power of storytelling, Richter shared, which deepens engagement and understanding of climate change. “I was inspired to develop and incorporate this assignment into the learning part of the SLT by several articles and several podcasts on climate change. In brief, these resources identified the value and necessity in listening to and sharing stories about climate change (extreme weather, changes to lifestyles, etc.) as a way to broaden understanding and increase engagement in efforts towards resiliency and sustainability.”
Collecting oral histories, personal accounts, from people who directly experience the impact of storms or other events made worse by climate change is paramount. “I was also inspired by the work of Narrative4, a non-profit that works with classrooms to develop oral histories and share the stories with other classroom groups,” Richter continued. “In most cases, the past few years, these stories have involved SuperStorm Sandy, but students have also recorded interviews on the Canadian wildfire smoke which severely impacted air quality, and other major storms which have occurred. Virtually all of these disruptions were made more severe by climate change, so the purpose of the assignment is to increase awareness of how climate change influences our daily lives through storytelling.”
While the first and final days of the SLT may be described as internal and reflective, the three mid-week days are reserved entirely for experiential service work. The SLT visited a total of three innovative local organizations where they developed leadership skills alongside peers while engaging with various aspects of sustainability. Through hands-on work at exciting urban sites, students explored themes such as sustainable farming, environmental stewardship, resource recovery, healthy soils, and nutrition.
“It made me very happy and pleased to know that I was doing a service that I could see the effects of right in front of my eyes,” said one student participant. “When Harlem Grown talked about a transparent food system, I thought that was very important. It supported their name very well by having all the steps and the cycle laid out to us before our eyes.”
In August, following a similar one-week intensive model and joined by student leaders, Director of Service Learning and History Faculty Elijah Sivin will lead a second sustainability-focused SLT. This session will center on service learning through the lens of addressing poverty-related issues in New York City.
