Students in High School are involved in Service Learning through our Student Run Businesses, Classroom Teaching Assistants, Barnyard Tours Program, and experience abroad in Central America with our S.M.I.L.E With Books Programs.  Our Barnyard Tours Program features students in grades 8-12 facilitating barnyard tours of our farm animals for school groups from around the Phoenix area.  CGCS students give the tours and work with visiting students.  They teach them about the animals and carry out hands-on activities with them and the animals.  The T.U.R.T.L.E.S. Program is a sea turtle rescue in Costa Rica. Students from CGCS go to Costa Rica every year and work on the beaches of Ostional to assist mother sea turtles from losing their eggs to poachers and to help the baby sea turtles to make it to the sea.  The also prepare and give presentations on sea turtles to other schools and venues.  Our S.M.I.L.E. With Books Program involves students collecting donated Spanish books for a year.  Their outreach for donated books goes into many areas of the community as well as our school and others.  During their expedition to Panama, Costa Rica, and Belize students transport the books to indigenous tribes and needy communities.  They hand out the books to students and donate large collections directly to the schools. They also take photos of the village children and their families which are then color copied, framed and distributed back to the families the next year.  This program has been highly successful and is life changing for our students, especially for them to see how much these people love getting the books and their photos.

The tribes visited and sponsored in Panama include the Noge’ Bugle’ Tribe in the Northeastern Panamanian rain forest of Cilico Creek and the very primitive rain forest Embera Tribe living on the Alajeula River in Southern Panama.  Future Expansion of this program is on-going as our students in Leadership classes continue to increase the number of books collected which allows us to serve more tribes and communities.