WIS Spreads Fairness Outside Waverly City Limits
Sam Larsen
Staff Writter
At Waverly Intermediate School teachers find it important that their students develop characteristics that will stay with them for the rest of their life. These traits are taught in and out of the classroom.
“Waverly Intermediate School has an ongoing character education project where we focus on different character traits throughout the year.” ELL teacher Mary Zach said.
Teachers at WIS take the time out of every month to teach the students about valuable character traits.
The traits are citizenship, fairness, caring, respect, trustworthiness and responsibility. The first month of the school year focused on citizenship. The teachers try their hardest to practice community service to keep the kids involved. For a community service project in September, a selected fifth grade class walked around town and picked up trash.
The month of October focused on fairness. The students, staff and families from the community got together and collected 2,877 pounds of clothing and linens to donate to The People’s City Mission. There was a box placed in each classroom for the students to bring clothes, jackets, socks and other linens. At the end of the month the student council students assisted in carrying all those clothes to the People’s City Mission truck.
Fairness is often perceived as sharing what one has and another doesn’t. The staff reminded the students that practicing fairness wasn’t just getting along on the playground or in classrooms but everywhere.
“Fairness means that everyone has everything they needs to be successful,” fifth grader Halle Rourke said.
Students that were involved in the clothing drive was the Character Counts Crew, which is the student council. They went to each class at the end of the week, gathered the clothes and announced the totals in the morning announcements so the students were updated with the progress they were making. When the staff announced the total at the end of October, the students reacted greatly.
“Students seemed very excited to be making a difference. They were certainly amazed by the amount of clothing and linens we donated.” Zach said.
This was an amazing moment for the students because this is when they realized that they really made a difference for the community and the people in need.
“The kids were proud of what they did,” counselor Erin Abel said, “they felt like they really made an impact.”
Our community played a very large part in bringing clothes from their homes to the school for those in need. There were posters all around the school and letters sent home to families for them to be aware of what was going on. There is a likelihood that things like character traits are not always taught in some homes, so students are able to learn about them at school.
“The goal of the project is for students to become better individuals,” Zach said, “We want them to realize that their actions make a difference in their own lives and the lives of others.”
The Intermediate school has other traits to teach the students for the rest of the year, and there are community service projects that must go along with those traits. The community services are going to try to effect the town of Waverly a little more such as collecting school supplies.
“It would be nice to do something that would be more local,” Abel said.
Gathering clothes and linens for The People’s City Mission was a great way to bring together the student body and families in town that helped donate so much. The future will bring similar situations and will help out others.
