Student Contributor -A. McDonnell
This is a pencil drive for kids and families that simply cannot afford pencils or writing utensils. I partnered with Right to Write for the project. Education gets put on the “back burner” sort of speak for many people all over the world, providing food on the table can be hard enough and it comes down to it, they stop seeing schooling as a priority. This gives kids the opportunity that they didn’t see as possible before.
The third grade class I worked with held a pencil drive, we set a goal for 1,000 pencils. If the class reached this goal, they would get their very own pajama party for just their class. They also wanted to have an individual goal, so whoever brought in the most pencils got to be the “teacher for the day” where they sit in their teachers desk to do their work for the day, and the teacher sat in the students desk. I thought these were great goals for this project considering it didn’t cost anything to provide the prize, so they knew any money going into this drive was all for the pencils for the kids that don’t have them. The students got so engaged with this that we started reserving 5 minutes at the beginning of the day and the end of the day to count pencils and fill in our bar chart. We talked about all of the places these pencils could go, and how it would impact the recipients. I even had one student say “I will never think writing my name on my paper is silly ever again! Some kids don’t get to write their name on anything!”
I think that overall, my project went over well. The easiest way to send the pencils after all collected was into gallon sized zip lock bags, then into boxes. About 200 pencils can fit into a gallon bag just for reference!
