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Giving to The New School
Making the World a Better Place
The New School has always relied on the generosity of families, partners, friends, alumni and other contributors to enhance the educational experience of our students. We need donations of several kinds, and encourage you to think of The New School when looking for opportunities to give.
In the coming weeks, this page will be developed to tell you more about exactly how your giving makes a difference, and to recognize our current contributors.
If you wish to know maore about the needs of the school, please contact the teachers at teachers.newschool@verizon.net, or call The New School at (315) 475-6453.
Thank you.
The Little School that Could
What do beaded bracelets, pennies, a blue compost bucket, fleece scarves, cat food, cat scratching posts, puppets and a blanket have in common?
The New School, an independent, K- 8 school, located in Dewitt, New York spent all year trying to make a difference, what we call Making the World a Better Place. In one year our twenty-three students (the entire school) worked on the following.
It all began with Martin Welych Flanagan (4th grader) who was nominated and received a $5,000 Disney sponsored award for his efforts to save baby harp seals. Last year at The New School he organized a petition drive and began making beaded bracelets, which carry messages like "Save a Seal." Martin donated half his award to The New School and the other half to the Humane Society.
Savannah and Neona Krabacher and Evelyn Caldwell (5th, 2nd and 7th graders) worked hard at home and at school to make fleece scarves, which they sold and raised $250 for the SPCA.
Emmy Newman (4th grader) started a Pennies for Peace drive to help Pakistan and Afghanistan; over the course of the year she collected $250.
Zerbie Hynson (5th grader) felt we should do something to help the earth. His idea? Compost our lunch and snack throwaways.
At the beginning of the year, during snack and read aloud, we read books about many individuals whose efforts have made the world a better place. We read about Dr. Greg's efforts to build a school in the mountains of Pakistan in 3 Cups of Tea; Wangari Maathai's efforts to plant trees in Kenya; Nelson Mandela's struggle to end apartheid in South Africa; Pearl Moscowitz's last stand to protect a Gingko tree in NYC; Mahatma Gandhi's non violent efforts to end British rule in India and about the founding of the Audubon society in She's Wearing a Dead Bird on her Head.
The New School children brainstormed an amazing list of possible projects that they were interested in pursuing. (Save the Rain Forest, Stop global warming, Stop unfair treatment of people, Stop new housing developments from cutting down trees. Recycle paper, Help add funding to art programs in schools, Provide food for SPCA, Stop littering, Save endangered whales, Stop stray cat colonies, Stop killing cats and dogs at SPCA, Providing food to Kenya, Protect the Ozone layer (CFC's), Research animal's benefits before saving them.)
We narrowed down the list voted on two projects which were the focus of our school wide effort this year: Helping the SPCA and saving endangered animals.
Zerbie, Evy, Haleigh, Maia, Ace, Adam, Sam, Neona, Savannah, Nora and Quin chose to work on the SPCA project with Miranda. They selected three projects: creating cat-scratching posts, gift baskets and a photo essay. The children delivered these items to the SPCA in June.
The Endangered Animals group, consisting of Kenny, Bobby, Martin, Nick, Autumn, Eyeruse, Alaira, Jonas, Gulliver, Max and Emmy worked on making puppets to sell. This project will be continued next year
All year children learned how to knit 9 x 9 inch squares which were assembled into an incredibly colorful blanket and donated to the Rescue Mission. Each square of the blanket was filled with learning and love. When The Rescue Mission's Jim Hoch asked the children "Who might use the blanket?" Kenny responded "Someone who needs warmth and love." Ace commented, "That was a good one, Kenny."
Saving the Seals
6/9/08 - Thanks to Martin's leadership, a group of us (Max, Bobby, Nora, Dora, Kenny, Autumn, Haleigh, Martin, Danny and Eyeruse) have been working on doing what we can to stop the inhumane hunting of baby harp seals. One idea we had was to create a petition. Our goal is to get 1000 signatures. So everyone was given 10 petition sheets, each with 10 spaces for signatures. Martin and Bobby have already brought in 100 signatures each! We will be continuing to work on this project next year, but we plan to collect as many as we can before the end of the school year. Parents have been asked to help. Stay tuned.
