Between serving food and packaging supplies for the needy, learning about pollution in our waterways and reading to children, Darlington School’s eighth-grade class went on a journey of self-discovery and service through the 8th Grade Capstone Project.
The capstone project is an eight-week-long project where students learn about poverty, education and the environment, and how these issues impact their community.
The 56 students in the eighth-grade class hit the ground running on the project with their first outing to the Northwest Georgia Hunger Ministries. At the food pantry, the students helped by putting together backpacks of food for students in need, stocking shelves, handing out supplies and even organizing potatoes.
“We wanted to show them that they, themselves, can actually get in a situation where they can do the actual work and help,” an eighth-grade teacher, Cristy Baldwin, said.
The students worked hard to help the organization and received praise from volunteers and employees for all of their help.
“It was a very eye-opening experience,” Evy Molnar, one of the students, said. “We’re very privileged here, so we don’t get to see a lot of that stuff. It makes you realize and look at things from a different perspective.”
While the first day of service was a profound experience for these students, the service opportunities that followed it had just as significant an impact on them. For the eight weeks the capstone project ran, students, divided into smaller groups, visited different establishments to either serve the community or receive first-hand knowledge of real-world issues.
“They’re hungry to do this,” one of the teachers and capstone coordinators, Samantha Rush, said. “Once we get started and they go out there, their energy level and what they want to do and how engaged they become in their community skyrockets.”
To see the impact of poverty on the community, the students helped different organizations like the Family Resource Center. Restoration Rome and local food pantries. They also heard from people in the community dedicated to helping the needy.
For the environmental portion of the project, students visited the City of Rome Water Filtration Plant to learn about filtration and Marglen Industries, where they learned about how recycled materials are turned into plastic bottles.
When learning about education, the students made a few visits to the Wiggles and Giggles Daycare and worked on building a website from research into the impact of early childhood literacy and education opportunities in the area.
One of the students, Molnar, said that going to Wiggles and Giggles was her favorite part of the project. She had fun with the kids, who would climb all over her while she read to them, but what stuck with her the most was the impact her presence had on the people who worked at the daycare.
In the room Molnar was volunteering in she saw how hard the woman who was taking care of these little kids was working. She couldn’t imagine how difficult her job was and was happy to help.
“It was nice that we helped her and maybe lifted some of the weight off of her shoulders,” Molnar said.
Over at Hunger Ministries, eighth-grade students Charlie Cowan and Raven Whitner had their own eye-opening experiences. Talking to the people visiting the pantry, Cowan quickly realized how privileged he was as a student at Darlington and how that privilege has blinded him to what’s going on in his community.
“One of the most impactful things was realizing our community struggles, and we don’t see that because we have all of these opportunities a lot of people don’t have,” Cowan said.
Whitner’s lesson came with a more personal touch when she saw a friend using the pantry’s services.
“When I was there, I saw somebody that I knew shopping there, who I didn’t know was struggling so much financially,” she said. “That brought it closer to home. This isn’t just something outside of my own circle. This is affecting people I’m already close with.”
Whether it was lessons learned while serving in the community or wisdom being imparted by keynote speakers, every student walked away from the project with a deeper understanding and compassion for the community.
“The goal was to empower them to change the world, but then we realized that changing the world is a little wide, so we thought we’d just change our community,” Baldwin said.
This was Darlington’s second year holding the capstone project, and the eighth-grade team at the private school plans for it to become an annual project.
The format for this year’s capstone was a complete 180 from last year’s, Baldwin said, but it was for the better.
The first year the project was more academic, with students sitting in a classroom learning about these key issues. The teachers saw that the project looked like another class and decided they needed to bring the students into the community if they wanted them to truly learn.
“One thing that is good to remember, even as an academic teacher, is how much kids learn by experience and reflection,” Reilly Thomas, an eighth-grade teacher, said.
With a shift in the execution of these lessons, the teachers said the capstone project was a hit with the students. The only way it can improve, the teachers said, would be if they could find more organizations to work with.
The students had such a great time getting involved in the community, it would be great to get more people involved, Baldwin said. The Along with the organizations they partnered with this year the teachers are looking for organizations that could use an extra hand.
Groups interested in being a part of Darlington School’s 8th Grade Capstone Project contact Rush at srush@darlingtonschool.org.
This article was written by Rachel Hartdegen and published in the Rome News-Tribune on May 23, 2025.
