Donations collected by fourth-graders in Holly Birdsong’s class at Cortland Elementary School for Mercy Rescue & Adoption of Jennings County are shown around a Christmas tree near the main entrance to the school.
Submitted photo
CORTLAND — For several years, a schoolwide nonperishable food drive has been conducted around Christmastime at Cortland Elementary School in Seymour.
Plus, teachers Holly Birdsong and Jo Ferguson have had their classes do individual giving projects instead of doing a gift exchange between students.
This December, the other classrooms at the school embraced the giving spirit by choosing a local cause to help in lieu of giving gifts to each other.
From babies to senior citizens to animals, the projects will benefit many people and things this holiday season.
Birdsong said this was the fifth year for her fourth grade class to do a December project, and each group of students has picked a different cause each time. This year, it was Mercy Rescue & Adoption of Jennings County.
One of the organization’s volunteers, Heather Chase, and a local dog trainer, Monica Rivera, visited the classroom for a presentation and talked about dogs that have been rescued. They even brought a dog for the fourth-graders to pet.
The class also did a unit on giving and being generous in the community and had a book to go along with it, and they collected donations for the dogs at Mercy Rescue.
“Usually, they come up with good ideas,” Birdsong said. “I like to hear what they know is out there in the community that they can get involved in, what they think is the best. It’s different every year what each group thinks, and we have a lot of ideas that get close, and then I let them really think about it. We do a little writing about what group could use the most, what it’s going to benefit the most. They do pretty good with it.”
Ferguson said during her 22 years as a teacher, including the past 20 at Cortland, an angel from an Angel Tree has been picked to benefit a local child in need. Depending on the amount of money brought in by the students, they buy for one or two children.
This year, they had enough for one, and it was a young boy. School counselor Wendy Nicholson used the money to buy the items and then brought them to the school for Ferguson’s third-graders to wrap.
“We learn about communities in our social studies, so this is a way that they can help out people in their community,” Ferguson said. “We talk about ‘Do we really need to spend $5 on a gift for us when we could collect more money than that and maybe get something somebody needs?’ and they seem to enjoy that.”
Third-grader Claire Strong said it was a good project for the class.
“It was fun that we got to see that we were going to help a child in need and that they would have something for Christmas,” Strong said. “It makes me happy. I feel like it’s the same (feeling) from getting a present myself, getting to know that they have something.”
Suzi Fallis’ kindergarten class chose to collect packages of diapers for the Sweet Cheeks Diaper Pantry at First Presbyterian Church in Seymour.
“We talked about what it means to give and what it means to receive, and we know that we’re so excited when we’re 6 years old to receive things, but we’ve been learning about how much fun it can be to give things,” Fallis said.
Given the students’ age, it was relatable for them to pick the diaper pantry.
“We have decided since we are little people that we would help other little people, and so we decided to bring in donations of diapers that we can donate to the diaper pantry to help little people of Jackson County at Christmastime,” Fallis said.
First grade teacher Stephanie Campbell and second grade teacher Leanne Woodard combined their classes to collect donations for Covered Bridge Health Campus in Seymour.
Campbell said several of her family members have been at that nursing home, so that tugs at her heart, and she knows some people there don’t get visitors or gifts.
“I was trying to think of something in the community that maybe hadn’t been helped before (by Cortland students),” she said. “I called and talked to (Covered Bridge), and I asked Mrs. Woodard if her class would like to join.”
Woodard was on board.
“We’ve never done anything for one of the nursing homes before, and just thinking of the different things that we hear about around the community, we hadn’t heard anyone else doing that, so we thought it would be nice to include them in on this,” she said.
The teachers came up with a list of items for the kids to bring in, which included blankets, toiletries, gloves, socks and more.
“The kids have done an amazing job of bringing things in,” Campbell said. “They were very excited about it. We talked about instead of this year having a gift exchange for us, wouldn’t it be nice to give back to someone who maybe wouldn’t get anything, and they seemed to really like that idea. Obviously, they did a great job. They really, really pulled through.”
Woodard said a couple of kids donated money, and Nicholson used that to buy items for the nursing home residents.
“They were very excited. They felt really good about it,” Woodard said of her students. “The parents seemed to be very happy, and we had a great response. Lots of kids were able to bring things in.”
Campbell said she’s content with continuing to help the nursing home each December, and it’s good for her students to learn about giving at a young age.
“It just made my heart happy because they get so much stuff, and I was like, ‘Why don’t we give?’ and they were very excited,” she said. “I think that’s going to set them up for a happy life if they start now.”
Oh, about that schoolwide nonperishable food drive, 1,958 items were collected for Community Provisions of Jackson County in Seymour.
