We Reached

Today is the first day of our Winter Break. Due to budget cuts and furlough days, we get 3 whole weeks off. To be honest, I need them. This is one of the busiest times of year for me at work. At my school I am the student activities coordinator. I plan dances, assemblies and other school wide events. This year I decided to resurrect an old tradition at my school known as Waldo Reaches Out. (Waldo is the name of my school. Please don't stalk me or be a creeper.) Basically I coordinated 6 or so different service projects for all 930+ of my little babies.

My students are awesome. I mean yes, they are in middle school, so they have that going against them, but overall I really like them. My students/school kind of has a reputation of being rough or a bunch of little gangsters. Yes, we have some punks, and yes most of my students are low income, but overall they are awesome.  I have found that they really like to give and help others. They just need the opportunity to help. Waldo Reaches Out gives them that opportunity and also helps to show the community a different side than what our reputation is.

We did a number of service projects for WRO.
Annual Food Drive

We collected about 1000 pounds of food.

Dog Biscuits for the Humane Society

The cooking classes baked up 18 batches of dog treats that will be given to the Humane Society.

Alphabet and Number Books for local Head Start classrooms

These are some of the pages the students made today. I think in total we had 50 completed number books and at least that many alphabet books!

Holiday Cards and ornaments for Seniors

The sewing classes made the ornaments. The cards were made in several classes as well.

Toothbrush Kits

The special ed class did a hygiene unit and then collected money and created these dental hygiene kits that will be given out at homeless outreach events.

Cards and Letters for the troops

We created a ton of Thank You cards that will be sent to soldiers stationed overseas. Some of them were really good. I should have gotten a picture! Some were also really funny :) I encouraged them to write jokes inside to help bring a smile to our soldiers. Earlier this year my leadership class ran candy donation drive after Halloween and we sent 50 pounds of Halloween candy to one of our teachers who is currently deployed.

Also our wood shop classes made and donated around 400 wooden toys, we put together 300 journals for Headstart, sorted 1200 books and so much more. My students are amazing!