Ms. Blaustein and Miss Sussmann
Third grade teachers, Ms. Blaustein and Miss Sussmann, have developed a community service program called “Third Graders Making a Difference”. This will be a year-long program that engages students in actively caring for members of the local and global community.
When asked about the overall program and the ‘Soles 4 Souls’ program most specifically, both teachers shared the following:
“Each month the third graders will learn about a different opportunity to give back to local and global communities. To start us off on a strong foundation of giving back, for the month of September the students collected gently used sneakers and shoes. Those donations will be given to an organization called ‘Soles 4 Souls’.”
“‘Soles 4 Souls’ helps people living in poverty through direct distribution of shoes and other items to communities around the globe. ‘Soles 4 Souls’ also helps to create jobs for people living in under-served communities.”
“There were several math connections that were also a huge part of this project. Each day the third graders collected and counted the shoes keeping a tally of the total number of shoes collected. They then used the data from each day to create bar graphs.”
Tuesday, September 30, 2014, marked the end of the first project. We extend much gratitude to family members and friends that helped the students to collect 229 pairs of shoes!
The third graders want to also give thanks to Mr. Trieu and Mr. Edvin for helping with the delivery of the shoes to the Stride Rite store in the Garden State Plaza. The manager of the store will then deliver the shoes to the ‘Soles 4 Souls’ coordinators.
We are very proud of how our third graders really made a difference! We look forward to their next project!
