Christmas In My Classroom

In lieu of a classroom gift exchange and teacher gifts, I asked the families of my class to participate in a service-learning project for an organization in Buffalo called Homespace Corp. As we began discussing why it is important to look out for others during the holidays, my students started sharing stories of times when they have given back to the community already. Many of them didn’t realize how much they have already done for others who have less than them. We adopted two families and we collected over 200 gifts! We made a special event out of our gift wrapping day and we had crockpot hot chocolate while we wrapped. I broke the kids into three stations. They were either making Christmas cards for the families or wrapping for one of the two families. We rotated so everyone had a chance to do a little bit of everything. It was one of the most exhausting days of my teaching career, but when I walked out into the hallway when we were done, I was moved by how generous my students really were. They surprised themselves at how much we collected.