This is my daughter Ella, she is a kindergartener at Hornung Elementary in the Brighton School district. I don't normally use my blog to talk about my children, but as a parent and teacher I am so proud of her and wanted to share her story.
2 months ago, she overheard myself and my husband discussing the Flint water crisis. I didn't think that she had really paid much attention to what we were saying but then a few days later she began asking a bunch of questions. She and I were driving to her brother's babysitter and she suddenly asked me about it. I believe that we should honestly answer our children's questions with true answers. So I told her what I thought she could understand. I told her that something happened to the water in Flint, a city near us. That an accident made it dirty and sick, that this affected many families and many children throughout the city of Flint. I told her that because of this many children in Flint were very sick and might remain sick for the rest of their lives. I told her that they are sick because they spent many months drinking dirty water and that now they can't drink their water. Then we talked about what we use water for; drinking, cooking, bathing, brushing our teeth and many other things. We discussed what it meant to not have good water. It was at this point that she began tearing up and said to me "how many children do you think are sick?"
I said "I don't know but a lot."
"A hundred ?" she asked.
"Probably more sweetie?"
"Like a 1,000?"
"I think there might be more"
"Oh my." She said "my heart is breaking into a thousands of little pieces for each of the sick children."
She sat for a while, looking out the window thinking and then she said
"We should bring them our water."
"That would be a great idea sweetie, how should we do this?" I asked
"Well we could hook up our hose and drive the end to them."
"I don't think our hose is long enough to reach to Flint sweetie, but that is a great idea, what else could we do?"
"We could fill up buckets of water and bring those up to them."
"That might get daddy's car a little wet but I think that is a great idea too. What else could we do that would allow us to bring them water?"
"Well, at school we had to bring in bottles of water for our Holiday Tea. We could bring them bottles of water. We could get everyone to bring them bottles of water."
Ella went to her teacher, Mrs. McCullough and asked if she could start a water drive at her school. Mrs. McCullough and the kindergarten team, helped us come up with the idea having her and her classmates do small chores to raise money to buy water. Ella loved the idea, but like all children who are passionate for a cause, she took it to the next level. She volunteered her time at Love Inc., she did small projects for friends and family and asked both myself and my husband to ask our jobs to raise money for her project.
In the end, the Kindergartener's at Hornung Elementary raised $188.07. An awesome feat for those students who worked so hard to earn each of those dollars. On top of that, Ella raised an extra $195 in small odd jobs and from donations from the Novi Police Department. We took 16 cases of water and $341 to the Red Cross in Flint.
Buying water at Costco At the Red Cross in Flint
I don't think this is the end of her adventures in empathy or kindness. I know that there is more to come, just recently she said that she wants to draw a picture for every sick child to make them smile. She also wants to do a toy drive so that the sick kids have toys to snuggle with when they are not feeling well. As always I will stand behind her and help her with whatever she needs. I might be the teacher but she has taught me more about teaching that I could ever imagine.
I think as teachers we need to celebrate and share the stories of students who are making a difference like my daughter. I'm going to try to do better and hopefully you will too.
