Scott and Nancy Finnegan learned last year that both their 17-year-old son, Blaise, and 13-year-old daughter, Madeline, have Fanconi anemia. They will eventually need bone marrow transplants to survive.
Madeline and Blaise also have aplastic anemia, meaning they have lost some bone marrow, and is being treated by a Minneapolis doctor who specializes in Fanconi anemia.
On October 31st, a bone marrow/blood drive sponsored by Life South will be held at Hampton Cove Middle School in hopes of finding a donor for Blaise and Madeline. Siblings are usually the best bone marrow donors, but the Finnegans’ youngest child, 8-year-old Trinity, is not a match.

The ordeal began in March 2007, when Madeline, now in her final year at Hampton Cove Middle School, went to the doctor because of stomach pain and vomiting. Her pediatrician suspected appendicitis, but tests showed problems with her red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets.
Eventually, Madeline developed sores in her mouth and throat and was sent to St. Jude for a bone marrow biopsy; she was diagnosed with Fanconi anemia a few days later.
Fanconi anemia is a genetic blood disorder that causes bone marrow failure and often leads to acute myelogenous leukemia. Even after bone marrow transplants, Fanconi patients have an increased risk of developing cancer and other serious health problems.
Blaise, a Huntsville High senior who plays bass guitar and golf, was diagnosed while being tested for a bone marrow match for his sister. Neither child appears sick, but must be careful to observe signs related to Fanconi anemia.
Madeline and Blaise will eventually need a match if their bone marrow continues to fail. Nancy is Mexican, so there may be an increased chance to find a match within the Hispanic ethnicity; but we encourage all to support the effort in finding a positive bone marrow match.
We are asking for your support at the bone marrow/blood drive on October 31st at Hampton Cove Middle School from 7a.m.-7 p.m. Bone marrow testing is a painless swab of the check with a Q-Tip.

For more information, please contact
Chanda W. Davis at 256-755-4600 or Stacy Copeland at 256-428-8380

Mr. Phil McCrory spoke to 7th graders about the use of human hair in solving oil spill crisis and how hair breaks down to produce healthier, brighter, taller, more economically efficient plants. Human hair breaks down very slowly in fertilized soil and provides 15% nitrogen which aids many ways in plant growth. Mr. McCrory’s inspirational story can be found on page 575 in the 7th Grade Life Science book.

On Friday, September 20, 2008, my Honor’s Science classes measured the land for the gardens, constructed the small, but delightful greenhouse, and filled pots to grow herbs, vegetables, and flowers. After school, a group of wonderful young men met with Mr. Alan, Chelsea (our student observer from UAH), and myself to till the land and dump freshly composted dirt ( thanks to Magerite from Reflectives) into the nice red ground clay on the grounds of Hampton Cove Middle.

On Sunday the garden was designed and constructed by my husband, thanks to Mr. Roger West, Hampton coves security guard, for a wonderful design plan for the research gardens. Honors students will design an experiment to test how hair affects plant growth. Half of each garden will be planted with hair and the other half will serve as a control comparison group where no hair pads will be used. Vegetables from the garden will be donated to Meals on Wheels.

 I am a 13 yr. old at Hampton Cove Middle School.  October of 2007 after having sores in my mouth and a visit with my pediatrician I had to get my blood work taken. The blood work came back as showing that I had very low white and red blood cell counts. My platelet counts were low too. Dr. Horton referred me to see a hematologist at St. Jude here in Huntsville. The hematologist had concerns and thought it best that I visit St. Jude in Memphis , TN for a bone marrow biopsy to see why my counts were low. After many tests were taken, the biopsy and blood work came back that I had Fanconi and Aplastic Anemia.

This means that I have bone marrow failure and will some day have to go through chemo therapy and radiation in order to receive a bone marrow transplant. My disease is a recessive gene disorder. This means that both my parents carry the gene.

As of now I am doing fine and getting my blood drawn every three months to check and see if my counts have changed. Once a year I will have to have a Bone Marrow Biopsy done to check how my marrow is doing and to be looking for cancers and diabetes.

If you were to see me I look like a normal healthy teenager. Other than tiring and bruising easily I can do what other kids are doing.

I have played libero position on my school’s volleyball team for the past two years and I also run track for my school. I am on the honor roll, enjoy singing in the choir and Science is my favorite subject. In my spare time I enjoy reading books and watching movies about the 15^th -18^th centuries ,fashion and playing in makeup. 

FA is a blood disorder, but it also can affect many of your body’s organs, tissues, and systems. Children who inherit FA are at higher risk of being born with birth defects. People with FA are at higher risk for some cancers and other serious health problems.

FA is different from Fanconi syndrome. Fanconi syndrome affects a person’s kidneys. It’s a rare and serious condition found mostly in children. Children with Fanconi syndrome pass high amounts of key nutrients and chemicals through their urine, which leads to serious health and developmental problems.

Bone Marrow and Your Blood

Bone marrow is the spongy red tissue inside the large bones of your body. Healthy bone marrow makes three types of blood cells:

• Red blood cells (also called RBCs), which carry oxygen to all parts of your body. They also remove carbon dioxide (a waste product) from your body’s cells and carry it to the lungs to be exhaled.
• White blood cells (also called WBCs), which help your body fight infections.
• Platelets, which help your blood clot.

Blood cells live for a limited time. Then, they are replaced with new blood cells from your bone marrow. If your bone marrow can’t make enough new blood cells to replace the ones that die, you can suffer from serious health problems.

Fanconi Anemia and Your Body

FA is one of many different types of anemia. The term “anemia” is used to describe conditions in which the number of red blood cells in a person’s blood is lower than normal.

FA is a type of aplastic anemia. In aplastic anemia, the bone marrow slows down or stops making all three types of blood cells. Low levels of the three blood cell types can harm many of the body’s organs, tissues, and systems.

With too few red blood cells, your body’s tissues won’t receive enough oxygen to work well.

With too few white blood cells, your body may have problems fighting infections. This can make you sick more often and make infections worse.

With too few platelets, you may suffer from excessive bleeding.

Outlook

If you or your child has FA, you face a greater risk than other people for some cancers. About 10 percent of people with FA develop leukemia, a type of blood cancer.

People with FA who survive to be adults are much more likely than others to develop cancerous solid tumors. The risk for solid tumors increases with age in those who have FA. These tumors can develop in your mouth, tongue, throat, or esophagus (the tube leading from your mouth to your stomach). Women who have FA are at much greater risk than women who don’t have the disease for developing tumors in the reproductive organs.

FA is an unpredictable disease. The average life span for people who have FA is between 20 and 30 years. The most common causes of death related to FA are bone marrow failure, leukemia, and solid tumors.

New medical advances have improved the chances of surviving FA. Bone marrow transplant is the major advance in treatment. However, even with a bone marrow transplant, the risk for some cancers is greater in people who have FA.

I taught Madeline last year and learned so much from her as she walked through the experience of discovering that she and her brother had Fanconi Anemia. Fanconi Anemia is a recessive genetic disorder that affects the production of healthy blood cells. Fanconi Anemia is not cancer, but Madeline and her brother are both in need of a bone marrow transplant. Therefore, my 7th Grade Science class and Stacy Copeland, our wonderful nurse for Hampton Cove Middle School, are hosting a bone marrow drive at our school on October 31, 2008. Hopefully, we can get a match for both of the Finnagan children. They are in good health now, but what a blessing it would be to have matching marrow when the time comes.

Chanda Davis

Service-learning is a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities.

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Defining Service-Learning | What is Service-Learning? | What are the Characteristics of Service-Learning? | Resources Cited | Additional Print Resources | Online Resources

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Defining Service-Learning
In the past several years, service-learning has spread rapidly throughout communities, K-12 institutions, and colleges and universities. In a recent survey of its member institutions, Campus Compact gathered information on trends in community involvement and service across a good cross-section of the nation’s colleges and universities (Compact, 2001). During the 1999-2000 academic year, among the 349 campuses that responded to the survey.
712,000 students had participated in some form of service
12.2 percent of faculty were offering service-learning courses
6,272 service-learning courses were taught
9 percent required service-learning courses for graduation

The recently issued report, entitled “Learning in Deed” from the National Commission on Service-Learning (Fiske, 2001) quoted National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) estimates that in the 2000-2001 academic year, more than 13 million school students were involved in service and service-learning. NCES also found that between 1984 and 1997, the number of K-12 students involved in service-learning programs rose from 900,000 to over 12.6 million while the proportion of high school students participating in service-learning grew from 2 percent to 25 percent during the same time period.
Of course, in interpreting all these statistics about the growth of service-learning we must remember that not everyone uses the same definitions of service-learning. Service-learning is still evolving and has not yet settled into a shared vocabulary, a set of common ideas and theories and a generally accepted approach to validation. This has encouraged a great deal of experimentation, discovery and local adaptation, but it is also impossible to have one definition for all service-learning programs.

What is Service-Learning?
Even though there are many different interpretations of service-learning as well as different objectives and contexts, we can say that there is a core concept upon which all seem to agree:
Service-learning combines service objectives with learning objectives with the intent that the activity change both the recipient and the provider of the service. This is accomplished by combining service tasks with structured opportunities that link the task to self-reflection, self-discovery, and the acquisition and comprehension of values, skills, and knowledge content.
For example, if school students collect trash out of an urban streambed, they are providing a service to the community as volunteers; a service that is highly valued and important. When school students collect trash from an urban streambed, then analyze what they found and possible sources so they can share the results with residents of the neighborhood along with suggestions for reducing pollution, they are engaging in service-learning. In the service-learning example, the students are providing an important service to the community AND, at the same time, learning about water quality and laboratory analysis, developing an understanding of pollution issues, learning to interpret science issues to the public, and practicing communications skills by speaking to residents. They may also reflect on their personal and career interests in science, the environment, public policy or other related areas. Thus, we see that service-learning combines SERVICE with LEARNING in intentional ways. There are many other illustrations of how the combination is transforming to both community and students.
This is not to say that volunteer activities without a learning component are less important than service-learning, but that the two approaches are fundamentally different activities with different objectives. Both are valued components of a national effort to increase citizen involvement in community service, and at every age.
The National Commission on Service-Learning in its recently issued report entitled “Learning in Deed: The Power of Service-Learning for American Schools,” offers a definition of service-learning that incorporated the most essential features common to service-learning across the country. According to the Commission, service-learning is different from volunteerism in that it is “a teaching and learning approach that integrates community service with academic study to enrich learning, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities. ”
In 1990, the Corporation for National and Community Service conception of service-learning said that it:
Promotes learning through active participation in service experiences
Provides structured time for students to reflect by thinking, discussing and/or writing about their service experience
Provides an opportunity for students to use skills and knowledge in real-life situations
Extends learning beyond the classroom and into the community
Fosters a sense of caring for others (as adapted from the National and Community Service Act of 1990)

Because of its connection to content acquisition and student development, service-learning is often linked to school and college courses, and inspires these educational organizations to build strong partnerships with community-based organizations. Service-learning can also be organized and offered by community organizations with learning objectives or structured reflection activities for their participants. Whatever the setting, the core element of service-learning is always the intent that both providers and recipients find the experience beneficial, even transforming.

What are the Characteristics of Service-Learning?
According to the National Commission on Service learning, service-learning:
Links to academic content and standards
Involves young people in helping to determine and meet real, defined community needs
Is reciprocal in nature, benefiting both the community and the service providers by combining a service experience with a learning experience
Can be used in any subject area so long as it is appropriate to learning goal
Works at all ages, even among young children

Service-learning is not:
An episodic volunteer program
An add-on to an existing school or college curriculum
Logging a set number of community service hours in order to graduate
Compensatory service assigned as a form of punishment by the courts or by school administrators
Only for high school or college students
One-sided: benefiting only students or only the community

The distinctive element of service-learning is that it enhances the community through the service provided, but it also has powerful learning consequences for the students or others participating in providing a service. Service-learning is growing so rapidly because we can see it is having a powerful impact on young people and their development. According to Eyler & Giles, 1999,
service-learning is a form of experiential education where learning occurs through a cycle of action and reflection as students work with others through a process of applying what they are learning to community problems and, at the same time, reflecting upon their experience as they seek to achieve real objectives for the community and deeper understanding and skills for themselves.
In the process, students link personal and social development with academic and cognitive development. Eyler and Giles (1999) summarize their observations by saying that in the service-learning model, “experience enhances understanding; understanding leads to more effective action.”
In general, authentic service-learning experiences have some common characteristics (taken mostly from Eyler and Giles 1999).
They are positive, meaningful and real to the participants.
They involve cooperative rather than competitive experiences and thus promote skills associated with teamwork and community involvement and citizenship.
They address complex problems in complex settings rather than simplified problems in isolation.
They offer opportunities to engage in problem-solving by requiring participants to gain knowledge of the specific context of their service-learning activity and community challenges, rather than only to draw upon generalized or abstract knowledge such as might come from a textbook. As a result, service-learning offers powerful opportunities to acquire the habits of critical thinking; i.e. the ability to identify the most important questions or issues within a real-world situation.
They promote deeper learning because the results are immediate and uncontrived. There are no “right answers” in the back of the book.
As a consequence of this immediacy of experience, service-learning is more likely to be personally meaningful to participants and to generate emotional consequences, to challenge values as well as ideas, and hence to support social, emotional and cognitive learning and development.

The 7th Grade Science classes have committed to collecting nonperishable food items for the Huntsville Assistance Program each week. We are committed to making  a difference through learning, loving, and helping those in need. So if you are reading this information—send food for those that are less fortunate to Hampton Cove Middle School room 232. This program is sponsored by 1st Baptist on Governor’s Drive in Huntsville, AL. Who would have ever thought that our economy would be in such dismay. Thank you Hampton Cove for supporting our efforts to make a differnce. Thank you students for learning the rewards of sharing and serving at a young age. Remember, we are all in this race for a better tomorrow  together. Lets LOVE those who need to be LOVED–Lets HELP those who need to be HELPED—-A little goes a long way. Mrs. D.