Twitter Tuesday Inspires an Act of Kindness

My students participate each week in a school chat that we call Twitter Tuesday.  We tweet with a few other classrooms about a topic and share the hashtag #ntalearns.  We have done chats since the beginning of the year, but we were inspired by the prompt a few weeks ago from Wonderopolis, "how can you pay it forward?"

We started by watching the video from the Wonderopolis site, but then our conversation turned to how we could do something in our own community, and pay something forward in our world.  They always participate in a Today's Meet to discuss the topic of Twitter Tuesday (see below). My students wanted first to donate money, but I also work in a place that money can often be hard to come by, but we wanted to support something local.  We came to a vote and decide to support The Greater Chicago Food Depository with a food drive and also host a movie night one evening at school to collect monetary donations.  My students researched the charity, found out statistics about food insecurity in Chicago, and how donated food was distributed within our community.

They were able to create a flier for the food drive and the movie night and set a goal to donate 400 cans which is about one per student in our building.  They have been working hard over the last week to donate themselves, spread the word, set up and host a movie night, and count and collect the food donations.


Through this small work of having a conversation online with fellow school mates, my students were empowered to act, and act in a way that benefited others.  They did the work of researching the charity, the problem, and then created a ways to support the organization within their school community.   This work falls outside of my curriculum map, but it is driven by students and students' passion to impact their community.

In the end, they raised over $45 from their movie night and beat the goal of 400 cans by collecting 611.  I am so proud of the actions they took and the hard work it took to organize and implement a school wide food drive and fundraiser!