Under the direction of teacher Dr. Susan Frantz, Pine-Richland Middle School eighth-graders spent the first half of the school year gathering a "Welcome to America" packet for a refugee family coming to America.

On March 1, the students loaded up trucks and vans with household goods and furnishings and headed out to Troy Hill to set up a residence for a family from Burma.

They divided into teams to prepare bedrooms for the parents and their children. They also prepared the kitchen and bathroom and placed decorative touches, such as picture frames, around the house. Clothing and toys were put in their proper places to give the living quarters a homespun touch. Students designed "Welcome to America" cards and banners and left baked goods on the kitchen table.

Pine-Richland Middle School students became interested in this project after reading a story in English class about a refugee boy and his father coming to America from Vietnam. Students expressed their curiosity about refugee families in their own city and wanted to help out in some way. Through Catholic Charities, they learned that school and community groups can gather up a set list of household goods to help prepare living quarters for incoming families.

Each fall for the past eight years, students eagerly begin their collection drives. High school students who have participated in the past often ask to return to be a part of this yearly outreach activity.

Adult family members come with trucks and vans to load the extensive collection, and the students operate like a well-oiled machine to load the goods marked and labeled by room. After the set-up, students return to meet the family once they are settled in and bring items still needed. They will converse through the aid of an interpreter and learn about the family's conditions that brought them to America.

"In this age of global awareness, Pine-Richland Middle School students are experiencing first-hand the cultures of countries they most likely will never visit in their lifetime," Frantz says. "In the past, students have welcomed families from Russia, Africa, Bosnia and Afghanistan. Each visit holds a special memory."

As a follow-up, students will write essays, poems and stories that convey the essence of what it means to be in a land of the free. Each interpretation is unique to the individual student's insight into this curriculum-related experience.

The writings are sent to magazines and contests for publication. At the end of her eighth-grade year, Caitlin Haenig submitted her writing in response to this activity to the Freedom Foundation of Valley Forge's annual essay contest and was honored as a state winner last summer.

"Students making real-life connections between what they study in the classroom and experience in life outside the walls of the classroom has made this project an ongoing success at the middle school," Frantz says.