Inside Gallaudet
Boston Celtics players, middle school students include Gallaudet tour in trip to D.C.
 Photo: Rhea Kennedy |
Students from the Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Boston, Mass. visited Gallaudet during the free trip to the Nation’s Capital they received, courtesy of the Boston Celtics basketball team and Southwest Airlines.
Celtics team members Delonte West and Tony Allen accompanied the more than 30 eighth grade students for the June 21 campus tour. While on Kendall Green the group ate lunch, observed a class in the Jordan Student Academic Center, participated in a basketball clinic led by West in the Field House, and learned about student life at Gallaudet from Charity Reedy-Hines, director of Admissions, and Brian Sipek, who works with prospective undergraduates in the Admissions Office.
The students also met with their Massachusetts senators, Edward Kennedy (D) and John Kerry (D), at the U.S. Capitol and received a VIP tour of the Air and Space Museum.
The visit was the students’ reward for winning the ASSISTS community service program. ASSISTS, now in its ninth year, “is designed to help young people develop an understanding of critical issues society faces, and to help them recognize their ability to initiate real change,” according to a Celtics press release. The Celtics and Southwest Airlines invited teams of students from Boston’s 27 public middle schools to come up with a project that would improve their school and neighborhood. The Horace Mann School students won with a seven-tiered community service project designed to improve deaf awareness and beautify their school. They first went to their teachers to determine areas in need of improvement, then took the results and devised their project, which involved older students acting as role models in the classrooms of younger ones and cleaning the school's play area.
"Along with learning the value of giving back, these students are learning teamwork and that their efforts do make a difference," said Southwest Airlines Area Marketing Manager Michele Miller.
Posted: 5 Jul 2007
