Ancaster Meadow Students Band Together to Help Classmate
Thoughtfulness, initiative, generosity and love come in many forms. Recently, Grade 3 students at Ancaster Meadow showed all these attributes by launching a fundraiser on their own.
Their goal was to help pay for the wheelchair Calum, their classmate, needs. All of the Grade 3 students are special and have their own challenges. Calum’s gifts and challenges are unique. He has a rare medical condition that makes him medically fragile.
So his classmates, led by Sebastian and Deborah, decided to help. They made bookmarks, pictures, brought in parts of their rock collections, donated toys, all in the effort to raise money to buy him a special chair to sit in.
“Calum likes to be around other kids and they love to involve him in ways such as reading him books,” Principal Paul Clemens says of the boy, who has a full-time nurse with him at school. “There is something special about the culture of our school.”
As they planned a series of Penny Sales, the students organized who would be at the selling table at nutrition breaks, how much the items would cost and more. They diligently raised $277, but the story gets better…
The school’s Home and School Association and Students’ Council each matched the Penny Sale proceeds, bringing the total to $831.
Pride is another wonderful trait. Parents, staff, administration and, of course, classroom teacher Dave Pasian are all very proud of the efforts of these amazing students.
Pasian gathered parents, students and his class together to present a cheque to Calum and take a photo.
Clemens says this kind of generous spirit isn’t as rare as you would think at Ancaster Meadow. In fact, the school has raised funds to support a family that arrived after leaving fire-ravaged Fort McMurray.
And on his desk, Clemens has four or five applications for new student-led fundraisers.
Updated on Thursday, June 09, 2016.