Students at St. Benedict's Preparatory School in Newark didn't understand why they were looking at pictures of the closed Ironbound Stadium in the city's East Ward.

They registered in May for a social media and marketing course offered at the school by Ironbound USA, a Newark nonprofit organization that has been working with St. Benedict's to prepare students for life after graduation.

The students were confused when Gary Bloore, the organization's founder who would teach the class, told them that they were going to clean up the grounds of a stadium that had once been used for high school football games but hadn't been touched in 30 years. In 1987, the federal government closed the stadium after testing found contaminants in the playing field.

Bloore was gung-ho about the project, focusing on the 4,500-seat concrete bleachers and a large uncontaminated adjacent area in front of them that had become a hidden garbage dump behind the Ironbound Recreation Center.

"Why don't we do something great?'' Bloore told the students "Let's not be average.''

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It was an admirable goal, but the students had a pressing question to ask of him:

"What does this have to do with social media?'' said Tevon Thomas, who just graduated from the prep school.

The students couldn't see Bloore's vision at first, but they get it now. Bloore told them that the best content for social media was to do something good. Cleaning the stadium, they learned, was the right thing to do for the community. And along the way, the task became more important than any picture the students posted on Instagram.

"We wanted to make sure we were doing it for the right reasons, not to get credit from it,'' Bloore said.

This is why several of them returned last week to keep pecking away at what they started in May. They wacked more weeds, picked up more garbage, watched Bloore use a chainsaw to take down another tree.

"It gave us the opportunity to help our city,'' said 15-year-old Isaiah Jimenez, a Newark native who recently transferred from St. Benedict's to West Essex, when his family moved after the school year.

"I still want to keep a strong connection,'' he said. "I still want to keep that bond.''

This wasn't your ordinary cleanup. The students had to be convinced it was worthwhile, especially when they got a look at the amount of garbage piled high in the stadium. They could have changed their minds and taken a different class.

"I was surprised to see how bad it looked,'' said Pedro Rodriguez, 18, a graduate who lives in the Ironbound.

Students from St. Benedict's Preparatory School in Newark clean up the Ironbound Stadium with Gary Bloore, founder of Ironbound USA, a non profit organization in Newark that has been preparing the students for life after graduation.

Garbage was everywhere, from household castoffs to construction debris. Fifteen trees, as high as 35 feet, sprouted among the weeds and stretched the length of the bleachers, blocking the view of the contaminated field overgrown with vegetation.

"It's not something that you do every day,'' Thomas said. "It's not every day you get to clean a stadium that's been abandoned for 30 years. It's crazy.''

Bloore takes "crazy'' as a compliment.

He could have hired a contractor, but that would have defeated his purpose of getting the kids to work and see a project through. So, instead of being in the classroom, they cleaned up the stadium from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. every school day for nearly a month.

The class was part of St. Benedict's spring phase project, a 30-day program that allows its students to augment their education beyond the classroom. Bloore made it work with Ironbound USA.

"I thought the kids would learn more from this experience than the traditional social media,'' Bloore said.

There's lots more to be done, but a time-lapse video posted here shows how much progress they made with the help of local graffiti artists who painted the borders of the bleachers.

The goal is to have seasonal festivals at the site. The first scheduled event is Paint for Pink on Sept. 30, to raise awareness about breast cancer. Lisa Byron, who was Bloore's long-time partner, died of breast cancer in December. He does this in her memory, working non-stop to make it happen and to get young people to grind for a purpose.

He came up with the idea to clean the stadium in the middle of another endeavor with Michael Steadman, director of the Leahy House, a residential hall at St. Benedict's for international and local students who need a respite from personal circumstances at home.

Steadman, a three-time NCAA boxing champion and former midshipman from the U.S. Naval Academy, wanted to start a boxing program for young people in an empty space that needed to be renovated at the Ironbound Recreation Center.

Bloore would add his educational component -- Ironbound Professional and Social Skills -- a life-skills program he teaches at St. Benedict's, where students learn that they are a brand and that everything they do affects their brand.

At no cost to the city, which operates the recreation enter, Steadman and Bloore converted the space into a gym, aided by private donors who also fund Bloore's education program at St. Benedict's and Essex County Vocational Technical Schools.

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With a spiffy new place, its walls done by graffiti artists, Bloore and Steadman figured the stadium looming over the recreation center should be cleaned as well.

Boxers volunteered. The city of Newark provided rakes, equipment and transportation for St. Benedict's students.

"These are people who need to be talked about,'' said Obalaji Baraka, manager of the city's Recreation Department. "They didn't ask the city for one dime. It was a blessing, because nobody wanted to touch that place.''

Two years ago, the city and Celanese, a chemical and technology company that once had a plastics plant on the site, agreed to terms for cleaning up the contaminated site. Newark Business Administrator Jack Kelly said then that Celanese agreed to pay about $2.3 million to remove the contaminated soil. The city's responsibility, he said, now will be to finance the rebuilding of the field. Work could begin this fall, assuming City Council authorization.

Bloore, meanwhile, presses on. The students thank him for pushing them, instilling confidence and a work ethic for a project they didn't think could be done.

"If it's not hard, it's not worth it,'' Jimenez said. "And if you say you're going to do something, then you should do it.''

They did it, all right. Bloore and their school's motto wouldn't let them give up: "Benedict's hates a quitter."

Barry Carter: (973) 836-4925 or bcarter@starledger.com or

nj.com/carter or follow him on Twitter @BarryCarterSL