LYNN — Shoemaker Elementary School is celebrating 100 days of school this week by giving back to the community.
The 22 classrooms in the school were split into 10 groups and tasked to collect 100 nonperishable food items each to be donated to The Salvation Army.
The idea for the food drive came about after the school’s principal, Christina Colella, spoke with Capt. Helen Johnson of The Salvation Army, whose daughter is in the second grade at Shoemaker.
“I have a good relationship with them (Helen and her husband, Kevin) and I’m on the board at Salvation Army, so I was trying to think of something fun that we could do for the 100th day,” Colella said. “I thought it would be nice for us to do something that gives back.”
Each classroom is still doing their own celebration, but the food drive is schoolwide.
An announcement for this 100-day celebration was made last Monday, and Colella said each group has already surpassed 100 donations.
“I definitely did not realize how quickly they would get to 100… I thought it would take us at least two weeks,” Colella said. “Every single classroom got to 100 already, so we have way more than we were expecting.”
Colella said they are approaching 2,000 items as of last Friday, all of which will be given to The Salvation Army’s food pantry.
As a way to get the students to donate as much as possible, the groups were given an incentive of extra recess time if they reached the goal.
The classroom who reached 100 items first will receive five extra recesses, the second group to finish will receive four extra recesses, the third group will receive three extra recesses and so on.
“That incentive definitely helped bring in a lot,” Colella said.
Colella said the students have all figured out that they’ve donated more than 100 items in each group, but they don’t know who reached that target first.
The 100th day of school was supposed to be Feb. 10, but because of the snow day this past Friday, the 100th day will now be Feb. 11.
Although each group has already surpassed the 100 food items, Colella said they are not limiting the amount that students can bring in and will continue to donate whatever they collect to The Salvation Army.
Some classes even turned the drive into a math lesson, counting and posting the number of donations they had every day.
“The kids were really getting into it,” Colella said. “Every time I would go into a room they would show me and be excited to tell me how much they have and figuring out how many more they needed.”
Colella will be announcing the winning group later on in the week.
The Salvation Army thanked Shoemaker for all of the donations and for “teaching the joy of giving.”
