Middle Schoolers Connect on Community Day

Our 6th-8th grade students are continuing to reflect and reminisce after spending the day yesterday building connections with each other, our campus and the wider community. Each fall and spring, middle schoolers spend one full school day engaging in Community Day, an extension of our Social Responsibility & Impact program. Each grade level focuses on a specific theme tied to Service Learning. Woven into the academic curriculum, we want students to learn to build empathy and collective voice, apply learning and innovation, and lead their peers to act, reflect and measure positive impact. 

“This year, my focus in crafting our Community Day for our Middle School students was intentionality. Collaborating with our fantastic teachers, we worked to find similarities across different classes, helping students see the ways their learning was interconnected,” said Nicole Aggarwal, Kent Denver’s Equity & Community Engagement Associate, who facilitated yesterday’s Community Day. “I then found corresponding nonprofit organizations who could offer their expertise and hands-on experiences for our students to begin learning about and addressing the very social issues they learn about every day. It was very exciting to hear from all of our guests how engaged students were in their learning and advocacy! Watching students collaborate, work together, and critically think about how we can learn about different communities and serve alongside them was amazing.”

Read below to learn about each grade level’s theme and the activities students participated in, as well as view a photo gallery from the day.

6th Grade—Grow Your Roots: Learn Where We Stand
In 6th grade, students spent the morning learning more about the land Kent Denver was built on. The grade split into two groups—with some students creating a land history timeline of Kent Denver and doing a photo scavenger hunt around campus, while others worked with Jim Tolstrup, the executive director of the High Plains Environmental Center, to explore the relationship of native and invasive species on campus and learn tribal names for natural elements.

Rounding out the afternoon, the 6th grade class heard from the Denver Indian Center about the services the center provides and how students can be allies and advocates for Native people. They then spent the rest of the day creating PSA posters to explain the timeline of the school’s land history, as well as wooden labels that connect native species on campus to the tribal languages students learned about. 

7th Grade—Branching Out: Journeys of Hope
With a special focus on the stories and voices of refugees, 7th grade students spent the morning hearing from International Rescue Committee—a global humanitarian organization that responds to the world's worst crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives—as well as Eyni Jama, a Somalian refugee who fled to Kenya before resettling in the United States and attending the University of Colorado Denver.

In the afternoon, the students split into smaller groups for activities that helped them connect to the refugee community, including making items for new refugee homes and writing letters to refugee children.

8th Grade—Leaf a Good Impression: Cultivating Civic Responsibility
The 8th grade started the morning at Cherry Hills Village City Hall, where students learned about city governance and considered what it means to be a responsible citizen.

During the afternoon rotation, two advisories worked on service projects—one at IFCS and one at Clothes to Kids of Denver—while the other students stayed on campus decorating meal bags for Project Angel Heart, creating Virtue Posters and making quilts for Newborns in Need.

The next Community Day is scheduled for April 22, 2026. Questions about this program? Contact Ms. Aggarwal, Equity & Community Engagement Associate.