By Robb Murray
Free Press Staff Writer
MANKATO — Blue Earth County needed a helping hand. Its family room, where children spend time with non-custodial parents, was in need of sprucing up.
Janet Cherrington needed a meaningful project for students in her Community Leadership class, a way for her students to take what they learned in the classroom and put it to work in the real world. And through the magic of service learning, both got what they needed.
Cherrington’s students spent Tuesday hauling donated toys and furniture to the second floor of the Blue Earth County Government Center. After a couple of months of planning, Tuesday was the day it all came together.
The new room was ready by the afternoon. If all goes according to plan, families will be able to use the room today.
“They did an awesome job,” said Melodee Hoffner, a volunteer on the county’s Social Services Task Force. “And their spirit of service was amazing.”
Cherrington said the planning process is extensive. The students must come up with their own plan for addressing a problem in the community. They must come up with solutions, goals, run their plans by the instructors and, in this case, the county. Her class has in past semesters worked with Campus Kitchen and the ECHO Food Shelf.
Cherrington said students learn more by engaging with the community to solve actual problems.
“To me, if students don’t put into practice what they’ve learned in the classroom, then we haven’t done our jobs,” she said.
Diane Meza, a sophomore whose family moved from El Paso, Texas, to Minnesota several years ago, said she was excited when she heard the class would be engaging in a service-learning project.
“This class brought me out into the community,” she said, “and now I’m going to continue to do it.”
Student Joe Polzin gathered a bunch of gently used toys for the family room. He said giving back to the community is something his mother taught him from an early age. His mother, by the way, was at the Blue Earth County Government Center Tuesday along with her son and the rest of the class.
She said she was impressed with Cherrington’s class and happy that her son was given the chance to do something like this.
“I think it’s just really cool for him to be able to leave his mark,” Teri Polzin said.
