Students Who Serve Others

Danika Leaver
Brookings-Harbor High School, Brookings, OR

Danika Leaver is a senior at Brookings-Harbor High School and has demonstrated an amazing ability to serve her school and community, to donate time to the American Red Cross, and encourage other classmates to serve others at the same time. Danika has been coordinating the school blood drives for the last two years. Her duties are to recruit donors, coordinate donation times, set up and clean up the gym, communicate with administration and the office of absences missed by donors, collect permission slips, answer questions, troubleshoot problems arising in the gym on the day of the drive, coordinate student volunteers and make sure they are on task and doing their job, be a liaison between the school and the Red Cross, and reserve the gym and inform physical education teachers. For the month leading up to the blood drive she can spend 5 hours a week or more just trying to do all these things. The day of, she is in the gym for at least 8 hours that day. She then starts gearing up for the next one.

Danika has worked at the blood drives since her freshman year. At the end of October, Brookings-Harbor had their latest blood drive. Their goal for the school was 43 units. They were able to collect 54 units. For every unit collected, it has the potential to save 3 lives. This means that 162 people could get blood collected at our blood drive. Brookings-Harbor, with a population of 475 students has continually outperformed the much larger (1,500+ students) in the valley. This is due to the great organization and the recruitment efforts of Danika. When she graduates, she will train a new volunteer and the school plans to continue to outperform the large valley schools in southern Oregon.

On top of all of the work that Danika donates to the American Red Cross, she also serves at the local food bank, Operation Christmas Child Donations, assisted in raising funds for Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, and has served as a class officer.

The Peter R. Marsh Foundation recognizes that students who selflessly and quietly serve others within their communities are some of our most valuable citizens. We have established the Silent Servant Award to honor them. For more information contact us at: http://www.prmfoundation.org

About Jim Warford

Jim Warford is the author of, The Chemistry of Culture: Strategies You Can Use to Create a Culture of Learning. For 15 years Jim Warford was Senior Advisor and Keynote Speaker for the International Center for Leadership in Education. Jim is an author, speaker, Leadership and Instructional Coach. He was named in March 2003 as Florida’s first Chancellor of K12 Public Schools. He stepped down in September, 2005 to become Executive Director of the Florida Association of School Administrators, representing over 10,000 Florida school leaders. As a Senior Advisor for the International Center for Leadership in Education, he works with states, districts and schools to provide coaching and executive training and support to school leaders and their staffs. As Florida’s Chancellor, he led the creation and state-wide implementation of Florida’s Continuous Improvement Model, FCIM, which resulted in that state’s dramatic gains in student achievement and an 80% reduction in the number low-performing schools. FCIM remains Florida’s required intervention for all low-performing schools. As Superintendent of the Marion County, Florida Public Schools, he first implemented the Continuous Improvement Model district-wide. As a result, school grades went from three “F”, eight “D” and only one “A” school in 1999 to twenty “A”, 16 “B” and no “F” schools in 2003. Under his leadership the high school dropout rate was cut in half. He taught applied technology courses at the high school level for 17 years and created a Computer Graphics/Video Production program that won many national and state awards. He was named Vanguard High School Teacher of the Year three separate times.

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