The following is a post by Tuscan School teacher and lifelong Maplewood resident Claire Gianni Sinclair for her blog “A Project for Kindness”:
It is amazing when you are able to work in a place where you can help to do good things for others while teaching empathy at the same time.
For nine years, I have been running a food drive at our school [Tuscan School in Maplewood, NJ]. We challenge every class to collect 100 items by the 100th Day of School. We have over 25 classes in our school, so if each class reaches the goal, we are able to donate close to 3,000 items to local food pantries.
Once again, our amazing school community did it!
Thanks to them and our many volunteers, children, teachers and parents, we loaded more than 200 bags into eight cars and delivered it all to two local food pantries.
I love when students come to me and tell me it is one of the things they look forward to every year. No matter their age, from the kindergarteners to the fifth graders, I love to see their enthusiasm when they see the bags of food piling up outside of my classroom. They can see the impact of how much good can be done when everyone pitches in.They are learning such an important lesson and so many people will benefit because of it.
