Reading, writing and arithmetic are all well and good, but for Pacific Beach Middle School students, education extends well beyond the classroom. As an authorized International Baccalaureate (IB) school, PBMS teaches students to think about their broader roles as world citizens. To that end, the school emphasizes community and service as one of its five major focus areas, and the school has teamed up with a variety of community organizations to create opportunities for learning and interaction. “It really extends our curriculum to the real world, and that’s what we are trying to do — get the kids to see that everything is connected. Everything they learn has a purpose,” said Jenny Sims, PBMS’s IB coordinator. PBMS has created a formal partnership between the San Diego Unified School District, SeaWorld and the HUBBS Research Institute that allows the organizations to share resources with students. In sixth grade, students tour both SeaWorld and the HUBBS facility to learn more about aquatic environments, said Travis Hughes, who manages the school field trip program at SeaWorld. “If they are just doing all this in the classroom, they have no buy-in,” Hughes said. “They’re just doing text work for text work’s sake. By coming here to SeaWorld and seeing some of the animals we’re working with — and how that fits into the food web and the habitat here in Southern California — it gives them an encompassing view of the habitat we are trying to preserve.” In turn, both SeaWorld and HUBBS have been active on the PBMS campus. SeaWorld staff member Peter Girard is assigned to the campus and works closely with students, helping to judge science fairs, doing presentations on marine life and attending the school’s Math Night and open house events. The Kiwanis organization has also pitched in on campus through Builder’s Club, a Kiwanis international youth program that engages students in a variety of community projects. Builders Club president Norma Gutierrez, a lively seventh-grader, is nearly breathless as she recalls the extensive list of fundraisers, donation drives and cleanup events that her fellow students have taken on this year. Her passion for volunteerism is evident. “My parents have always taught me that it’s not all gonna be about me, that I have to help out other people also,” said Gutierrez, who has already contributed more than 100 hours of service this year. “I get to mark something in this world,” she said. “I get to make a difference. It’s not just about my house. (It’s not the attitude of) I clean my house and everything else can go to the dump or something. No, I actually like to help.” Hunter Ketchum has also made a connection with the community. He is finishing up eighth grade at the school and he is already making plans to transfer his beach cleanup club to Mission Bay High School. The club adopted a stretch of beach from Pacific Beach Point to Tourmaline and its six members hold regular cleanup events using materials donated by Surfrider Foundation. Ketchum said the experience of leading the club has taught him things he would never have learned inside the classroom. “[I’ve learned] the values of actually caring for your community,” Ketchum said. “It’s like, I live here and I want it to be clean and I want it to be a fun place. So I don’t think I’d learn that just in a classroom. It’s actually going out there and doing it and cleaning up. It just makes you appreciate where you live more.” Working with students has made a positive impact on the community organizations as well. “Students are the future,” said Bill Hickman, San Diego chapter coordinator for Surfrider Foundation. “They are going to grow up and be leaders in the community. “We find that in classrooms, sometimes kids are taking the info, sharing it with their parents and a lot of the information is kind of going from the bottom up,” he said. “So its really cool. The kids are really bright and they really want to protect the Earth, so it is really empowering.”