Posted by Mrs. Nordenson, 2nd Grade
It is our mission here at All Saints Catholic Academy to not only encourage our students to achieve academic excellence, but also to be compassionate and caring citizens as Jesus would want us. This is why community service is such an important part of All Saints Catholic Academy life. It is a school initiative that each class performs a community service project each year. It can be anything from singing Christmas carols at the local nursing home, collecting food for the needy, or making cards for someone who needs a smile.
For the past three years I have had my second graders participate in the annual All Saints Catholic Academy craft fair as part of their community service project initiative. Perhaps you remember reading about last year’s amazing results in last summer’s edition of The Compass. This year I decided to take it on again. Each year we make a selection of crafts and Christmas ornaments that are easy for kids to make, but appealing to the craft fair buyer. Our classroom gets a bit crazy (as does their teacher) as the room fills up with pipe cleaners, beads, paint and various other craft materials in the weeks leading up to the actual craft fair. As a class we decide what organization the money we make will go to. Last year we gave almost $300 to one of our own students who had recently lost her father. This year, my students decided that they really wanted to help animals in need. It’s important to me that we choose an organization that is local so that the kids can see the direct impact of their service and the affect it has on their own community, so we chose to help the North Country Animal League (NCAL), which is just down the road from our school. Many of the kids were already familiar with this shelter as their own pets came from there.
On December 6 we set up our own table at the very well attended All Saints Catholic Academy craft fair. A few students and their parents volunteered to come in and help sell. I turned them into dynamite sales people welcoming customers and telling them what we were doing and where our money was going. Customers were impressed by the work of the second graders and ornaments disappeared off our table. At the end of the day, we made $204! The kids were thrilled with how much money we could raise!
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I knew I wanted my students to be able to actually witness where their money was going to so Beth White from the North Country Animal League came to visit us on December 18. Along with her she brought Yoplait, one of the most mild and gentlest dogs I’ve ever met! (Someone in the community is very lucky as Yoplait was making a quick stop at All Saints Catholic Academy to say thank you for the donation and then was off to his forever home later that afternoon!) While Yoplait wandered through the classroom enjoying all of the belly rubs and head scratching, we presented Ms. White with our donation check and a little gift bag with some of the ornaments we made in it. She talked with us about the expenses of the shelter and how our donation would help. Our donation could provide food for all of the animals in the shelter for more than a week. Students were able to ask questions about the shelter, but true to 7 and 8 year old form, they were more interested if she knew Sparky, Sophie, Linus, Diesel, or various other dog and cat names that they knew were adopted from NCAL. And the best part? She knew and remembered almost every one of them! How neat for her to see that the animal she helped rescue and take care of was now in the good hands of a loving second grader?
In the end, my students not only learned about their local animal shelter, but each of them saw how their little bit helped. This charitable act couldn’t come at a more appropriate time than the giving season of Advent. I hope that this one small act by my second graders helped prepare their hearts a little bit for the birth of Jesus and for them to see how small acts can help in big ways.
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