Elm Street students have can-do approach in last week

LACONIA — It was a moonshot of a goal, Elm Street School fifth grade teacher Andrea Morin admitted, when her students suggested trying to fill the floor of their gymnasium with donated food. But it would give her the chance to work out some grade-appropriate math problems, and, even if they only got part-way there, they could provide some good for their neighbors.

She was right, it turned out. Their original plan was to run the project through Thanksgiving, to give the local St. Vincent de Paul food pantry a boost during a time of high demand. But their momentum kept building, so they decided to keep collecting, and counting, items that people within and outside of the school dropped off.

Morin said she is going to keep the project going through the end of this week, and will end it on Dec. 7. Even if no more food is brought in, the class project has been a fruitful one, generating more than 6,000 items, including cases of peanut butter and jelly that were recently delivered.

“I think we’re halfway there, which is better than we expected,” Morin said.

Her class project has been spearheaded by students Adam VanPraet, Usiah Perez and Ryan Greene. Together, the students figured out that it would take 1,380 boxes of food to fill the 1,674-square-foot floor. They then created a graph to record each time that a box of food is donated.

Greene said the math has been the easy part, the hard part has been carrying the food out to the parking lot to be delivered to the food pantry.

“I didn’t expect to get this much,” VanPraet said.

Perez said they started to realize in October that their project might have a chance at getting close to their goal. “We were getting stuff every day,” he said.

“It makes me happy to see that people are going to donate so that poor people can eat more,” said Perez.

The experience has changed the way the students think about the holidays. VanPraet said that last year he thought about the things that he wanted for himself. This year, he said, “I want to help people – make sure they have enough to be happy.”

Those who wish to help the class in their last push toward their goal can drop a donation of nonperishable food – peanut butter and jelly, and chunky soups are especially in demand – at the school. Checks, made out to Elm Street School with “Cans for a Cause” in the memo line, may also be donated to the effort.

“It was a pretty amazing goal to go for in the first place,” said Morin, so the students have been impressed by the progress made so far. “They’ve been quite excited.”