For a Good Cause

Today at the high school I teach at, the students kicked out a bunch of their teachers and administrators and sent us to the curb in front of the high school for the day. Our mission, to beg for donations from passing cars to help us give twenty-six needy families in our community a wonderful Christmas. I was a little uncertain about this since it was my first experience with this annual event, but it ended up being SO much fun. To get me to the curb my students had to bring in money (we worked on raising the money for the past two weeks) and a dollar sent me to the curb for one minute. I stood outside, in the freezing cold and snow for just about an hour each block. I was so proud of my students for raising this money! After a day of chasing vehicles (my favorite was the massively large cement truck that my friend Nicole and I rushed--the driver ended up giving us a substantial donation), and standing in the freezing cold, I am exhausted, but have a wonderful memory to take with me from this first year of teaching. The other highlight from the day was explaining to very confused looking drivers that our students had kicked us out of the school. As soon as I would say that part of my little rehearsed spiel about our mission, the drivers would almost always laugh and hand me a bunch of money. One gentleman laughed and told me he wished he and his peers would have thought of kicking their teachers out for a day back when he was in school. And for those of you wondering who exactly was supervising our students as we stood outside all day...well never fear, we had a whole host of substitutes at the ready to take over our classes for us once we were banished from the building. We teachers also gave up our planning blocks to cover other classes. I actually only had one sub in my room today, the others were my colleagues which I think was fun for the kids too. Seeing your psychology teacher in your English classroom is always interesting, right?! In the end we raised over $6,000 dollars which was really exciting. What a fun day!