Got Some Extra Eggs? Page 5
a boatload of
hope BY CHRISTOPHER HEIMERMAN
DIXON – It sounds like a joke aching for a punchline: Why did the boatload of chickens cross the hallway? Tuesday afternoon, the voyage was made so that a crew of sixth-graders at St. Mary Catholic School in Dixon could show off the emblem of their graciousness and effort. No joke, the school raised $2,668 this Lenten season for Rockford-based Hope for Haitians. Principal Jean Spohn said every dime raised goes to recovery efforts in Haiti that continue in the wake of the January 2010 7.0-magnitude earthquake. St. Mary Catholic School in Sterling took part, too; its final tally will be made after Easter break. In Kathy Shirley’s classroom Tuesday, there was no mistaking the Captain. Spohn sported a captain’s hat that Shirley’s husband, Glenn, recently ordered off Amazon.com. Holding the vessel and directing her fellow swashbucklers was Cecilia Sagel, the 11-year-old taskmaster who took charge as soon as a bare-bones plan for a boat was in place. “Let’s get the tall ones in the back and the short ones
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in the front,â€? Cecilia said from front and center of the deck. “Please be careful of the chickens. Don’t knock them over.â€? If she sounds bossy, it’s because she’s relished the chance to be ‌ well ‌ bossy. “It was especially fun, because I got to boss around the boys in our class,â€? she said, grinning like the cat that ate the canary. “Some of them went on strike, but I just told them what to do, and [religion and social studies teacher Sarah] Campbell told them they had to do it.â€? Bob Pfundstein of Hope for Haitians planted the seed when he gave the school a presentation, showing the K-8 students videos of children mired in poverty, and talked about how it would cost just $125 to clothe and educate a Haitian child for a full year. The fundraising took off like a discharged cannonball. “We have so much,â€? Cecilia said. “There are some things I feel like I could not live without. My life would
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The Review March 29, 2016
Teamwork and determination send nearly $2,700 to impoverished children a world away
never be the same if I didn’t have that one thing, like my dog. They probably don’t have a dog. It feels nice to be able to help people when they don’t have as much as we do. He explained how poor these people are, how much we can help, and how much it would mean to them.� Given a choice of an animal they could raise money to buy for Haitians in need, the sixth-graders picked chickens. Thomas Powers, 12, coined the phrase “boatload of chickens,� his logic being that if they picked chickens, they could, in fact, fill an entire boat with them. “If everybody just kept bringing in $30, we could collect a lot of chickens into a boatload of chickens,� his classmate and the project’s de facto ringleader, Cecilia said. “We have a really big class,� said Alicia Ardis, its 12-year-old director of decoration. The eighth-graders committed to educating as many children as possible on the Haitian situation,
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Students in Kathy Shirley’s sixth-grade English and reading class show off their boatload of chickens Tuesday afternoon at St. Mary Catholic School in Dixon. The eccentric bunch raised money to buy chickens as part of the school’s participation in the Hope for Haitians program. In order to get the word out, the class created a cardboard boat to help steer the fundraiser forward. and earmarked the leftover cash for buying goats and chickens. The seventhgraders picked chickens, too. Glenn Shirley has been volunteering in the school since he retired from the State Police, and since the sixth-graders were in kindergarten. “He’s very attached to this group, besides being attached to me,� Kathy said. When he heard about the boatload of chickens, he ordered the captain’s hat, and suggested creating paper sailors hats. The hardest part, Cecilia said, was painting the boat, but they managed to paint it and cut it out during a single class with part-time art
teacher Heather Hartzell. What began as a simple boat became more and more elaborate. They didn’t plan on making a merchicken, with the tail of a fish and the body of a chicken, or an anchor, or a slew of origami barnacles. “All I did was cut a circle out, cut a line to the middle, folded it over each other, taped it and pushed it into the middle a little bit,� Alicia said. “It took like 5 seconds.� They’re not sure what will become of the boat, but it might be nice to keep it at the school, in case they do the Hope for Haitians fundraiser again – or just to provide a general reminder of what’s possible when
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