NORTH ANSON — A small group of high school students gathered around their teacher, Fran Sirois, as he laid a tape measure between two stakes in the ground outside Carrabec High School.

“Now this is where it gets a little tricky,” said Sirois, a technical trades teacher. “Watch what I’m doing, guys.”

The students watched as their teacher coached them on how to mark elevation and boundaries, important first steps in constructing a new greenhouse outside the school. They looked through a transit, a tool that provides a reference point for level ground, and carefully placed metal posts in the ground, marking the four corners of the greenhouse and measuring the depth that each post was driven into the ground to keep the structure level.

It was a task that required them to use geometry, trigonometry and algebra, but also their hearts.

The new greenhouse, which will be completed in a few weeks, is one example of a community service project that several students at the school are working on this year as part of a new service program called Learning Works AIMS HIGH AmeriCorps that was introduced at six schools in Maine last year.

“It’s going great,” said Principal Regina Campbell. “The AmeriCorps group has definitely become part of our school community and community at large. We have a lot of students that are either working as volunteers or are receiving their services. It’s definitely an asset to the school overall.”

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The program is a pilot project of Learning Works, a Portland-based educational nonprofit organization, and the Corporation for National and Community Service, a federal agency that funds volunteer opportunities and service work. AmeriCorps is best known for its role in placing volunteers, usually recent college graduates, into existing service projects around the country, but the AIMS HIGH program focuses on making volunteer opportunities available to students and community members around schools in their area.

In 2013, Learning Works received a $2.2 million grant from the Maine Corporation for National and Community Service, a state branch of the federal agency, to support schools in Maine such as Carrabec that received federal school improvement grants to fund academic programs. As part of the federal School Turnaround Initiative, the grant was awarded based on the need to increase educational achievement and graduation rates.

Last year, the program, which is overseen by a site coordinator paid for by the grant and has been funded through the 2015-2016 school year, established a tutoring program that works with students before, during and after school. This year, there is a new creative writing class that an AmeriCorps member established with a teacher and that is run by student editors. A school garden was established that produced squash and tomatoes for cafeterias in the district.

The district also received a $2,800 grant for the greenhouse project that will pay for the greenhouse itself, seeds and fertilizer and a field trip to a local farm to see a greenhouse in operation.

“The main thing we’re trying to get the kids to understand is that they have the capacity to grow their own food,” said Solomon Heifets, co-site coordinator for the AIMS HIGH program at Carrabec and Spruce Mountain High School in Jay. “It’s a chance to observe the natural process of growing things and the process of decomposition at the end of the growing season, but it’s also a chance for valuable community service. They’re not just feeding themselves; they’re feeding their classmates.”


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