are you doing your part?

Last year, my class came up with a GREAT idea... I knew it was important for them to start learning about volunteering and leadership, and being in a low-income school, they really don't have many opportunities for that, or have that many teachers who are willing to spend extra time to plan something.  So a little background info - our students wear 'uniforms' - sixth grade has to wear a red shirt with khaki or navy pants/shorts, 7th grade a navy shirt, and eighth grade a black shirt... it sounds kind of boring, but trust me, those girls spruce it up with cute fitting shirts, fun jewelry, shoes, and of course a hoodie because it is always freezing at school!  Sometimes on Friday's they can wear jeans if they were present all week, or if they received Honor Roll on their last report card, but they RARELY get to wear complete free dress... what we just call normal clothes!  It's so fun when they do, because you really get to see their personalities more, and I'm betting the girls spend hours deciding on what they will wear to impress the boys. 

So there we were, at the start of last year, and we're brainstorming in class what type of service project we could do.  We've had things in the past, ( other food drives, toiletry drives around Thanksgiving for the homeless, $ drive for the Red Cross to Haiti, etc.), and it was quite embarrassing how little was collected from a school of 1,300 kids, and being that I am quite competitive, there was NO WAY I would put my class in charge of something unless I knew we could really make a difference. 

Knowing that the kids loooove free dress, and only get it a few times a year for different reasons, we thought hey, let's hold a "Food Drive 4 Free Dress" - ding ding ding! 
1.  It costs the school nothing (besides poster board to advertise and paper bracelets to hand out) 
2.  It's a catchy slogan 
3.  Free Dress will really get their attention 
4. Let's be real - kids won't do anything unless there's something for them in it
5.  Think how much food we can get???

We started on our quest for the First Annual Stevenson Middle School Food Drive 4 Free Dress, with high expectations that our school community would embrace the idea... and a little scared what if they didn't... but luckily they pulled through and it was AMAZING!!!  We collected food that Monday thru Thursday, and 'charged' each student at least 2 food items, and in return they were given a special checkered wristband that they had to wear on Friday to show they could be in free dress.   Even though 2 items was all they had to bring, we had many many kids bring 5, 10, 15 or more items, just out of the good of their heart.  We partnered with the Souper Bowl of Caring (www.tacklehunger) to kind of be our backbone and purpose for this project... and thankfully they let YOU pick where to donate your food, so we were able to give it all to the Houston Food Bank and help those from our city in need.

We had set a goal of getting 2,000 items - you can look at the Souper Bowl website and see how much was collected from groups in your community last year, so I of course made our goal higher than what some other schools in the area had done. :)  Each day went by, and we were OVERWHELMED at how much food we were getting, it was so exciting!  We ended up losing count by the end of the week, but it was somewhere between 2,700-2,800 items - which was boxes, and boxes, and boxes of food!  Plus, a little extra perk was that I had written Julie Falcon, who is the Director of the SBOC for South Texas... I had told her about what my class was doing, and asked if she had any News station contacts I could talk to about spotlightting our school... she thought it was a wonderful idea, and set up Fox 26 News to come do a live segment at our school - WOW!  Along with them, a few ladies from the Houston Zoo came too with this huuuge fluffy bunny, because the Zoo was offering rewards for schools that participated, it was so fun!  They ended up doing 3 live segments - one interviewing me, one interviewing my kids and showing them going classroom to classroom collecting food, and one from the Zoo representatives... it was SO fun and SO special for those kids to get to see themselves on TV!

Soooo, fast forward to today, and we are in planing mode for our Second Annual Food Drive 4 Free Dress which will be held on January 24th - 28th... and though we don't have Fox 26 coming again, my class was invited to go to Reliant Stadium bright and early the morning of January 12th for the city wide SBOC Kick-Off!  Waahhhoooo!  Plus, we are getting to bring our awesome drum line who will I guess get to perform on the football field, so they are very excited as well.  I've gotten to be really good friends with Julie over the last year, and she is having my students paint banners to hang up in Reliant too, so they think that is pretty cool.

Ok, I know that turned into a long/random post, but I was looking at a recent email from SBOC, and it asked you to please share their mission with someone and encourage them to participate... I got a little excited and just wanted to write about our experience, and hope it will inspire SOMEONE to do something as well!  Our motto for the school is "Are you doing your part?" and we have a sign saying that in each classroom... so, I'll leave you with that, what are you doing to help out in your community??


"The Souper Bowl of Caring is the result of thousands of young people joining together to fight hunger and poverty in their local
communities. This unique, youth-led movement of caring is transforming the nation's biggest weekend of football into its largest
weekend of giving. Since the program started in 1990, over $71 million has been raised for local charities across the country."