Laurels & lances: Gifts of the season
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Laurel: To helping new neighbors. It is hard to become part of a community that you can’t understand. That is why the mission of Literacy Pittsburgh’s English as a Second Language classes is so important.
Immigrants to the area looking to learn to read and write English are finding help through the literacy organization’s generous volunteers. About 50 people provide the tutoring services that make the vital difference between residing in a location and living in a community. The number of recipients has bloomed from 60 to 200 over the last year.
“It is really important for me to speak well so that I can communicate, that I can do things for myself,” said Maria Bastidas, 31, who came to Oakdale from Venezuela.
Laurel: To teaching kids people care. For some children, every day at school is a reminder of what they don’t have. Not the wants like iPhones and video games. It’s the needs, like coats and clean clothes.
At Jeannette McKee Elementary School, there isn’t a lost-and-found box to riffle through to find a student a pair of gloves. There is a whole room dedicated to being the closet where necessities — from shirts to underwear to laundry soap — can be found.
It’s an idea first-grade mom Lindsay Artman Schulte of Jeannette said came about when some students wrote letters to Santa asking for shoes. Not Nike or Adidas. Just something to keep their feet warm and dry.
Since school started, 104 students have found help in a classroom that doesn’t teach anything other than kindness.
Laurel: To a celebration of generosity. The students of Stewart Elementary School in Lower Burrell didn’t have a holiday party this year. Instead, they had a “Kids for Kids” market to raise money for UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh patients.
They sold each other homemade Christmas tree ornaments and painted pictures. They brought in Pokemon cards from home to put up for sale. They had raffles and games and offered services like hair braiding and fortune telling.
And they blew right past their goal of $1,500, coming in with a proud $1,686.
That’s so sweet, but what makes it remarkable is that the kids weren’t content with that. Told what their total was, they immediately started collecting more, scavenging through the money they had left and bumping up the haul to $1,900.
These are students who have taken that “better to give than to receive” lesson to heart.