By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
CARIBOU — It’s been every grade for themselves the past few weeks at Teague Park Elementary School as the students and faculty engaged in Penny Wars to raise funds for a RSU 39 faculty member’s husband, who’s in need of a kidney transplant. Students deposited their pennies in their classroom’s piggy bank for weeks; faculty members rolled change for weeks, and when the final numbers were calculated there was $1,800 for the National Foundation for Transplants and the specified recipient.
Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie Bazinet
Fourth-grade students of Teague Park Elementary School raised the most money during Penny Wars at $680. Fourth-grade students include, from left, front row: Riley McNeal, Katie Strid, Kara Randall, Gabriel Rand, Adrian Dunham, Edmund Theriault, Joseph Cyr, Tabitha Saucier, Matthew Whitten, Crissy Corbin, Molly McCrossin, Olivia Picard, Nickolas Guerrette, Connor Charette and Logan Malm. Second row: Kyle Boucher, Josh Cummings, Hailey Jandreau, Riona Philbrook, Joshua Ouellette, Kari Chase, Jacob Long, Alexis Bruso, Jasmine Olson, Monique Nadeau, Dagan Savage, Brennan Poitras, Seth Roy, Jason Willette and Austin LaPlante. Third row: Kassandra Krul, Dan Liu, Carter Conley, Grace Gallagher, Ashley Violette, Sydney Thompson, Darrell Adams, Bethany Carney, Brooke Haney, Tia Cyr, Alex Ezzy, Chris Haney and Joeline Damboise.
“One hundred percent of the funds will be put into an account for the family as they go through the transplant process and the resultant expenses that occur — traveling to Boston, staying in hotels and the gas to get them there,” explained Teague Park Principal Tanya Belanger. “As those expenses come up, they’ll be able to draw necessary funds from that National Foundation for Transplants account,” she said.
There are 280 students in the three grade levels taught at Teague Park — fourth, fifth and sixth grade — and the staff worked to build their own collection too, which made the Penny War pretty fierce at the school.
“Students would bring in their pennies and they would put them into a piggy bank for their grade level; if they wanted to try to get ahead in the game, they put silver and cash into the opposing grade level’s piggy banks. Pennies counted for you, silver and cash detracted from your points value,” Belanger explained.
Mastering their strategy, Teague Park students made certain that their teachers didn’t win the champion fund-raiser pizza party by sabotaging their teacher’s piggy bank with silver coins and a couple of bills.
“They worked really hard to make sure the staff didn’t get ahead — we were in the negative all the time!” Belanger said laughing.
Aside from the student efforts to keep their teachers down, there was an overwhelmingly positive air in the school that came from knowing that their pennies would be used to help someone in need.
Belanger recalled one anecdote where one little girl went running up to the assistant superintendent Lois Brewer and told her “we don’t know who it is but we’re just giving.”
“They were just so excited about being able to help someone out,” Belanger said.
Lessons learned by students through this fundraiser about helping others and community support won’t crop up on any state-mandated testing, but teaching youths to be good people are lessons Teague Park teachers are not willing to overlook.
“Obviously when we think about school we think academics, math and reading, but there’s also the social aspect of community service and helping others,” Belanger said. Teachers talked with their students about the importance of helping others in their community and within their school family; through their Penny Wars fundraiser, students developed that want to help others in their time of need.
But the students seem to have taught their teachers a lesson, too.
“We thought Penny Wars would be a fun way to get our kids involved through the spirit of competition and we thought that they’d raise $200 or $300 because they’re little,” Belanger said.
But as the change poured into the piggy banks and staff members were rolling change around the clock, the teachers humbly started to realize that maybe they’d underestimated their students.
“They just blew me away with their giving spirit,” Belanger said. “We thought, as a staff, Penny Wars would probably make $200 and we were just blown away by how excited they all were to give to someone they didn’t even know; at such a young age, they have that spirit of giving inside of them and we were amazed.”
The fourth-grade class was the pizza party winner, raising $680 through Penny Wars.
While the fundraiser was undoubtedly a good lesson for the students, their efforts will go a long way in helping the family reach their $10,000 goal to help with transplant expenses; it’s Belanger’s understanding that even after the transplant, it will cost the family roughly $2,000 for the rest of their life just for the medicine required to keep the body from rejecting the transplanted organ.
“Every school in the district is doing something to contribute and this is our way of trying to help another person,” Belanger said. “It’s a good lesson for the kids on giving back.”
