Tuesday, January 18, 2011

106th Week Update - Miles Neighborhood Food Collection Project

Hi Folks,
The Miles School
One Can A Week Program
Launches Friday

It’s not fair that only I get to see the planning stages and launch of the Miles School One Can A Week program. So this week I’d like to share two recent emails I received from Rebecca Lipson, the teacher coordinating everything … I mean everything. After reading her emails below, you will understand what I mean by everything. The program Rebecca created is incredibly robust and includes all teachers, students and parents.

First Update
“Hi, Peter. Plans are coming along nicely to get One Can a Week up and running at Miles. Information sheets were sent home to families on Thursday and I'll follow up with an e-mail on Tuesday. This upcoming week will be our first week of collecting donations, so I hope you'll be able to stop by on Friday afternoon.

“The middle school students have been working hard on preparing supplies for their adopted elementary classrooms--hand decorated boxes for collecting and supplying teachers with information sheets. Another student group is creating the bulletin board in the front hallway.“The theme of Pac Man was chosen by the students. We discussed how to show the idea of abundance, so they incorporated a scoreboard that will show our "point totals". They will also be displaying the thank you notes on the board.

“One of the students is my administrative assistant who is helping me with taking all the student photos for the nametags so we can print those up. He will also be very helpful in keeping a spreadsheet updated with weekly totals. So, groups of 2-3 students keep information for the individual classrooms they service and my assistant will keep information for the school as a whole so we can send out weekly reports.

Second Update
“I've told the students that their nametags will serve as their hall pass in order for them to go to the other classrooms. What they may not realize is that it also creates buy-in as the leaders of this program. In my experience, most kids live up to expectations when given responsibility. It would be great to get 30 nametags so all the students and my staff assistants (two aides for students with disabilities) can also have them. It would be best to get the clip on kind or even ones on lanyards, rather than anything with a pin.

“I know the kids in both classes want to meet you (6th period is 1:20-2:12 and 7th period is 2:15-3:05). You are welcome to come anytime during those two classes. I'm not sure how long the collections will take, but I'm expecting to have all the donations gathered for you by 2:50.

“I also forgot to mention that one classroom already has a full box!”

I’m amazed by and very proud of Rebecca Lipson. She has done all of the critical thinking and planning on One Can A Week in addition to her full time responsibilities as the middle school science teacher. If you get a chance, please pop her an email just to say thanks for all of her hard work. Rebecca.Lipson@tusd1.org

Word From on High
When I dropped off our donation at the Food Bank this week I stopped by Pauline Hechler’s office to say hello. As I was leaving, Bill Carnegie, the Community Food Bank CEO walked by and stopped to chat.

He mentioned that he is often asked about One Can A Week so he thinks that the program is beginning to pique a lot of interest around town. This is more than a good thing

We collected a total of 248 lbs. of food, including 56 lbs of produce and 16 lbs. from The Axis Food Mart. The money we collected amounted to $68.50 … $50.00 in checks and $18.50 in cash. Unfortunately, I left the envelope on my desk at home so this amount will be added to next week’s donation. Oooops!

PS. This is a cell phone photo. Also forgot my camera.

See you Sunday,

Peter

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