“I believe that as a Christian school in a community, we should be the first ones to serve,” she explains. “God calls us to reach out to the widows and the orphans and the people who need things, and it’s our Christian duty to do that.”

D’Anne Weaver’s goal this year is simple: to help Shannon Forest Christian School emphasize service.

“I believe that as a Christian school in a community, we should be the first ones to serve,” she explains. “God calls us to reach out to the widows and the orphans and the people who need things, and it’s our Christian duty to do that.”

The set service hours traditionally required for graduation are well-intentioned, she said, but she’s found these may be just a box for students to check off their college-prep to-do lists.

So when Brenda Hillman, the SFCS director of academic affairs, approached Weaver last year with the idea of consolidating students’ service activities, Weaver jumped at the opportunity.

She was a natural pick to lead the effort. For the past three years, she’s developed a program called “Bridges,” partnering her sixth-graders in small groups with residents of the Gardens at Eastside assisted-living facility. The students visit the senior residents twice a month to participate in various activities and conduct interviews, turning the life stories they glean into a 400-page “yearbook” at the end of the year.

Weaver’s also the daughter of foreign missionaries and says that service “probably is in the fiber of my being.”

Over the summer, Weaver laid the groundwork for a massive service initiative that began at SFCS in fall 2009.

Elementary grades have adopted foreign missionaries who are sponsored by Shannon Forest Presbyterian Church. The students receive monthly visits from the missionaries and have classroom lessons about the countries in which the missionaries serve.