When teacher Karyn Jantz asked her students to come up with ways in which they could make the community a better place, they wasted no time.
The Grade 7 late French immersion class at Harwood Elementary School brainstormed and came up with four ideas.
When Jantz suggested they vote to select the best idea, their response was, “Why can’t we do it all.”
It all began as part of the students’ health and careers curriculum, in which they are working on goal-setting.
“We broke that down into personal goals, academic goals, school goals and community goals,” said Jantz.
The came up with the following:
n Community clean-ups, in which students will be out and about in the Harwood area of Vernon, picking up garbage in the new year and again in the spring.
n A bottle drive for the Vernon branch of the B.C. SPCA as a follow-up to the bottle drive they did in the fall where they raised $154 for the SPCA.
n Adopting a family for Christmas, where they would collect boxes of items to be given to their family, “adopted” through North Okanagan Youth and Family Services Society.
n Working at a soup kitchen or other non-profit organization, a project the students will be working towards in the new year.
“I am truly proud of my class for coming up with these ideas as well as the follow-through,” said Jantz. “Their inspiration has led to some of the families in my class adopting families at Christmas, too, as well as myself. These young kids are doing great things for our community.”
