Pennies for Peace

During December it came up in my 2nd grade classroom that I was reading Three Cups of Tea. My students wanted to know if I liked to read nonfiction and I mentioned that I was in the middle of reading a nonfiction book. Well, of course they had more questions, most importantly: What was it about? I started telling them it was about a mountain climber named Greg. He had tried to climb a really big mountain, but got sick on the way up and couldn't make it to the top. I told them how a family in Pakistan had helped him get better. I went on to tell them how Greg made a promise to come back and build them a school (since they didn't have one). We looked on the map and talked about what it would be like to not have a school. Well, my class was hooked. It seemed like every couple of days they wanted to know about Greg and his school. "How did he get money?" "Did he really sleep in his car?" "How did he get to Pakistan?" "Did he have enough money to build that bridge?" "How did he get his supplies out of that locked building?" If I didn't read enough to give them an update they would scold me and say that I wasn't doing my 20 minutes of reading homework and wouldn't be getting my free pizza! I couldn't believe how taken they were with this stranger's mission. I wanted to do more with them. That's when I talked to my principal about setting up a Pennies for Peace campaign at our school. Pennies for Peace is a fundraiser aimed at getting schools involved in Greg's cause. You can find more detailed information at the following link: Pennies for Peace. I'm excited to take on this project with my second graders and my school in the upcoming months. These are the small things that make happy I can make a difference through teaching.