IISD students have taken to heart the implied life lessons by defining needs in the community and working together to provide assistance.
At MacArthur High School, the Student Council collected contributions and supplies for fire fighters battling recent fires in the Possum Kingdom Lake area. Steven Metzler, City of Irving Capital Improvement Projects Department, was conducting a donation drive for Irving employees to donate comfort items for fire fighters. MacArthur Student Council members surprised Metzler with donations of bottled water and funds they had collected. According to Metzler, the donations from City of Irving and MacArthur helped resupply firefighters “who were literally on their last bottles of water and in their greatest hour of need”.
Fifth graders in the Read Right program at Brandenburg and Gilbert elementary schools raised $600 – $300 from each school – for MonkeyHelpers.org. Beginning as a critical thinking exercise, Read Right students from Brandenburg and Gilbert thought it would be fun to read and discuss the same weekly critical thinking story with each other via blog posts. The first story students read was Not Just Monkeying Around. As the discussion progressed, students learned of a “monkey college” located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Helping Hands: Monkey Helpers for the Disabled is a unique, national non-profit organization that places specially trained capuchin monkeys with people who are paralyzed, or who suffer other severe mobility impairments. The story inspired students to raise funds to support a monkey in its training.
Fifth graders in Christine Scovill’s class at Thomas Haley Elementary School had been learning about the Industrial Revolution, the advent of assembly lines, and how mechanization changed the way people live their lives. As part of their studies, students created their own assembly line, making bracelets, notebook covers, earrings, bookmarks and other items from recycled materials. What began as a study in industry became an opportunity for students to sell their wares to raise money for Red Cross tsunami relief and disaster relief in the southern United States. Students also created a video commercial for their products, accessed online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1SJmx9e464.
