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Middle school students spread holiday cheer
Mt. Pleasant kids donate over 700 pounds of food
MT. PLEASANT — Mt. Pleasant Community Middle School iJAG students worked together to make an impact on their community outside of the halls of their school.
Working together, the iJAG students put together a food drive where advisory classes competed to bring in the most items for the drive.
“To allow for more engagement between the students within the school, we decided that we should make it a competition to make it more fun for the kids,” Seventh/Eighth Grade iJAG President Kendra Stotlar said.
According to Stotlar, Micaela Bryant’s seventh grade class won the competition with 207 items and chose a pizza party as their prize.
Overall, the students brought in over 700 items which the Fellowship Cup then picked up.
“We came up with the idea because originally I wanted to create like community change, and help those that needed it,” Stotlar said.
According to Stotlar, the MPCMS iJAG program began planning this food drive at the iJAG Leadership Development Conference.
“When we came back, I kind of took the lead and just started planning everything out,” she said.
The middle school iJAG classes then created boxes to go into each advisory classroom to collect canned goods.
Stotlar was surprised to see all their hard work pay off as well as it did.
“I really wasn’t expecting a lot of effort and a lot to come out of it, but it really opened by eyes when I walked into the classroom and saw an abundance of items from toiletry products to dried milk,” Stotlar said. “I was just hoping that we had enough to give.”
“I learned that when you’re unsure of doing something, to plan it and organize it, to just go for it even when you’re doubting the outcome,” she said. “As we have seen, the outcome was an abundant amount of food items, exactly 27 boxes just filled to the brim with food, and we’re able to get that out for the holidays, which is amazing.”
Middle School iJAG Specialist Stacy Peterman expressed her pride in simply seeing all the students throughout the school work together to impact their community with this food drive.
“It was such a good experience to work together and give back to the community and make a difference,” Peterman said.
Stotlar is excited to look forward to the next thing.
“We really hop to make an even greater change than we did just with our first project,” Stotlar said.
The students also spread holiday cheer by creating tabletop Christmas decorations which they then donated to Arbor Court for residents.
“We made these Christmas trees for the nursing home made out of cardstock and some students chose to decorate them,” Stotlar said. “It was so heartwarming and amazing to see that the nursing home residents at Arbor Court here in Mt. Pleasant, their faces were so happy just that they got a paper Christmas tree.”
This experience meant more to Stotlar and the other iJAG students than they anticipated as Arbor Court welcomed them in to give the residents the decorations face to face.
“The staff was so welcoming and nice to us, and they actually invited us back, too” Stotlar said.
So, MPCMS iJAG students hope to return to Arbor Court after winter break to continue their efforts to impact their community outside the walls of their school.
Comments: AnnaMarie.Ward@southeastiowaunion.com
