Adding Philanthropy in the Classroom

A large part of my teaching philosophy is to make sure students are becoming well-rounded people even once they leave my classroom.  I started this tradition when I was student teaching years ago.  My students and I brainstormed ways we could help people around the world.  After a long list, students wanted to collect pop tabs for the Ronald McDonald House.  Along with that, we recycled the cans collected as well.  Overachievers that group of 5th graders!

This really opened my eyes to continuing this in future classrooms.  My first year as a second grade teacher, my students collected over 38,000 tabs (we weighed them, not counted!)  We did not reach our million tab goal, but we did collect quite a few and started to get the school involved as well.  I continued this philanthropy project the next year and we reached over 500,000 tabs.  And the next year...1 million pop tabs! My class was so excited, although I think we're still waiting on our plaque. I guess I need to make some phone calls. The neat part about our 1 million pop tab collection was that students from previous years would come down to my class to still help with the collection. I just loved that this was embedded within them and they still thought about the good they were doing for sick children and their families.

The first year's collection

 Two years later..1 million!

Thank you note from the Ronald McDonald House. I copy it and send it home with each student. We also post it outside the classroom for all to see our hard work. 

I challenge you all to try something like this in your own classroom. Students will have a sense of pride and learn that helping people is the right thing to do. Ready, set, collect!