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Date: 3/4/2020
EAST LONGMEADOW – Three civically-minded fourth-graders at Mapleshade Elementary School have taken it upon themselves to welcome home a local soldier from Afghanistan.
Keeley White, Kaylie Marino and Natalie Robertson are members of the “Social Justice League,” an extracurricular club run by Mapleshade’s School Psychologist Carolyn McBride. The club works on projects to benefit people in the community.
“We saw a lot of people who were lonely,” Marino said of her reasons for wanting to join a club that helps others.
“It’s so important to spread kindness at Mapleshade School,” said McBride, who began the Social Justice League last year. “One of our big goals is to continue with the inclusive community,” McBride said.
McBride was not the only one interested in acts of kindness, though. Marino said she and a friend began, and White later joined, the “Alona Group,” which involved finding kids who were alone at recess and talking to them, while they were at Meadow Brook Elementary School.
When McBride heard about the girl’s efforts, she said, she knew they would enjoy the Social Justice League, which they have now participated in for two years. Robertson became interested this year.
“Part of the reason I wanted to do this is because you can’t go to Mapleshade and not have friends,” Robertson said.
The Social Justice League, which has as many as 20 students taking part at a time, has worked on various projects. They have collected can tabs for the Ronald McDonald House Charities and given presentations to the entire school on programs such as “Look for the Good,” which focuses on gratitude and seeing others’ worth, and “Start with Hello,” which encourages talking to new people.
One of their recent projects was “Stockings for Soldiers.” The students hosted a drive and collected items for soldiers from the school community, then filled stockings and shipped them to Afghanistan.
“It was a month of collecting the goods,” Robertson said. “Almost all of the stocking had the same things but some had a little game.”
“Or a toothbrush,” White added.
“And everybody got socks,” said Robertson. McBride said the club made almost 100 stockings. The school received a picture of some of the soldiers with their stockings in a thank-you letter.
White, Marino and Robertson asked if they could make a stocking for McBride’s husband, Air Force Master Sgt. Jerry McBride, who had come home from deployment to Afghanistan in November.
McBride explained that the stockings were for soldiers overseas, so the students decided to work on a welcome home project specifically for her husband.
The students created a book for him that included lyrics to a song they wrote and stories. They framed a collage of photos that McBride provided and painted an acrostic poem on canvas. Finally, the girls designed a poster which included welcome home and thank-you letters they wrote to McBride’s husband.
The kids spent every recess for almost a month making the gifts, McBride said. They also worked on it after school.
Marino told Reminder Publishing that they made the gifts, “because he might get deployed another time, and we wanted to thank him for his service.” The students plan to present the projects to McBride’s husband in person.
Each of the students said that they plan to keep participating in the Social Justice League, continuing to work on projects to help others.