Student Contributor -S. Pierce
With my first grade class we contacted Spokane, Washington State Troopers, and had a State Trooper come into our classroom to share with our class what a trooper does for our community. The trooper let the students ask him questions and get to build a relationship with our local patrol. After the visit the students wrote thank you letters for the troopers in Spokane.
With the students we took time to write out thank you notes for the state trooper. For all the notes the students got to draw a small picture and a description for why they are thankful for the state troopers. The students thanked him for his service and for protecting our community. I then delivered the notes to the trooper a few days later. For this project we got to reach out to the state troopers and really let them know how appreciated they are. This gave students opportunities to meet a friendly face from our local law enforcement and make a meaningful connection with them. This opportunity was so powerful for the students. They were so excited to see that an officer was willing to take time out of his schedule to come share with our class.
For this project it was fairly easy to plan once you have contacted a trooper to come visit your class. The trooper I talked with was very excited to go into the class and share with us. On the day of we just let our front office know that he would be coming to visit and they directed us to our classroom. One thing to remember is to ensure your principal knows as well, as we did not and she was quite surprised when she saw a state trooper pull up to our school.
A. Luna
I did a similar project like this one with my first-grade class. My class has thirteen students, and their school is located in an urban area in Spokane. For my project, we also make Thank You letters. I talked about my project with my mentor teacher, and she thought it was a great idea. One thing that I did differently was that we wrote to staff members at the school; these were staff members who were not teachers. My students were able to show their appreciation to important people around the school who are not talked about as much as teachers. As a class, we brainstormed about these important people and our list included: the sweet cafeteria ladies, custodians, recess supervisors, and school nurses. My class also had an outline where they wrote what they were thankful for and at the top they were able to draw a picture that correlated to what they wrote for them. Another thing that I did differently and an addition to this project was that the students physically handed their letters to whoever they wrote to. Since the staff and students are in the same building, it was easy to accomplish this, and it meant a lot to the staff and it taught students the importance of their school community. Something that I did not include was having some of them in the class, I felt that this was not necessary, now looking back. Something that I would change next time is maybe going outside of the school community and having students connect with members in their community.
Y. Godinez
I did a similar project with my 3rd-5th graders. I student teach at a super small and rural school called Steptoe Elementary School, which is about 10 minutes from Colfax. The entire school has just over 20 students, and my class had 9 of those students. I had 5 third graders, 3 fourth graders, and 1 fifth grader. For my project, we did thank you letters for my mentor teacher. It turned out to also be teachers appreciation week that same week, followed by Mother’s Day a couple days later, so it was a really great gesture for my mentor. My students were able to show their appreciation for my mentor by first writing the prompt of “thank you for helping me learn and grow” on the front cover and decorating it however they wanted, and then inside the card, they were instructed to write what they specifically appreciate about my mentor. I gave them sentence frames that were “I appreciate you because…..(ex: you do *this* for me)”, also “my favorite thing about class is…….”, and “thank you for….”. I also instructed that if they had anything else they wanted to write down, they could. A couple students were so moved by this project that they decided to write an additional thank you card for another teacher and for the secretary. All the students were genuine and thoughtful in their responses which made the cards even more sweeter for my teacher since she did not expect that this gesture. My mentor was holding back tears when we gave her all the thank you cards, she loved them so much and gave everyone a hug. Something that I would do different is to do thank you cards for other people as well such as the other teachers in the building, the secretary, or for their parents/family members. I feel like opening up the option of choosing the recipient can increase participation and engagement.