If you set foot on Melrose Leadership Academy’s campus on March 29, you would not have known that all California schools were closed in observance of Cesar Chavez Day. That Monday, dozens of students, staff, families, and community partners from both Melrose and Bridges Academies gathered for an inspiring celebration of Cesar Chavez’s legacy.AmeriCorps volunteers kicked off the day by working with students and school staff to weed and plant the campus garden, while also building more planter boxes and constructing trellises. Meanwhile, community partners such as the Oakland Farm to Schools program set up information tables for families. There was also support for parents of 5th-graders heading on to middle school (some of whom will attend Melrose, a K-8).
“One of the reasons this event is exciting: We do it collaboratively with Melrose Leadership Academy [an East Oakland K-8 school],” says Bridges Academy Garden Coordinator Anne Louise Burdett. “It’s a great way to bring both school communities together and share resources and know that this is bigger than just one school site.” Students also collaborated on a new mural celebrating Chavez, drum troupes from both schools performed in the courtyard, and kids read aloud from Chavez’s writings and speeches.
Laying a foundation for the event, Bridges classrooms spent the previous month studying Cesar Chavez and integrating that learning into the after-school program, art lessons, garden class, and more. By the day of the event, says Burdett, “Students had a great idea of what he represented and why the event features him as a symbol of why we’re all there together as a community. The event is a really nice culmination of what he stood for: social justice.”
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