The entire kindergarten class at Salem Public School, along with its three educators, were recognized with an Everyday Hero Award this year from the Upper Grand District School Board.
“It’s recognizing great things that are happening by people in our schools,” said school principal Kathy Gossling-Spears.
“It’s pretty unique.”
At the end of November the class, consisting of 26 students in the junior and senior kindergarten levels, held a Rice Krispie square and playdough sale to raise money to purchase a wheelchair for Colten Timbers, a classmate with Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome.
The syndrome means Timbers has a partial deletion of the fourth chromosome, has low muscle tone, is non-verbal and experiences seizures.
Though the Upper Grand Learning Foundation’s Free to Achieve fund ended up covering the entire cost of the wheelchair, the class donated the money they raised back into the fund.
“I’m sure a lot of people get nominated … every year so it’s really special,” nominator and school principal Kathy Gossling-Spears said. “It shows this amazing sense of community in this school.”
She said the project covered the entire kindergarten curriculum, including wellbeing and wellbeing of classmates, innovating, problem solving, science, math and literacy.
“All of those parts of the curriculum were … (included) all the way through it and sometimes I think that people don’t see that part of what kindergarten is all about,” Gossling-Spears said.
“They think it’s just play but it’s very purposeful and that’s exactly what happened in that project and just the sense of empathy and caring and kindness.”
Kindergarten teacher Tessa Heffernan said she, along with educational assistant Trudy Matusinec and early childhood educator Holly Diljee, were shocked and surprised.
“I think we all felt very honoured by the award and it was definitely not something that we expected because it was something that we just would have done,” she said.
“I think it’s a beautiful thing to have something like this acknowledged but to me the biggest part was that feeling of accomplishment when [the students] were able to see Colton come in in that wheelchair and know that they had helped with a friend.”
Both Heffernan and Gossling-Spears said Timbers has excelled since receiving the new wheelchair.
He was able to go to the Special Olympics track and field meet on May 16 and he’s able to participate in all class activities.
“This is a classmate and the students were able to see how he uses this piece of equipment through the year and is able to get up to the top of the hill with us out there” Heffernan said.
“He’s able to navigate the forest and some rugged terrain and some beautiful moments of him being able to be involved in everything that’s happening.”
The educators also said a project like this allows kids to learn problem solving skills at a young age.
“It’s not about doing the same butterfly for spring colouring worksheet, where everybody does the same thing,” Gossling-Spears said
“That’s not what we want in our children. We want them to be problem solvers to care about other people, to be able to regulate behaviour, to be literate and numerate in ways that make sense in the world.”
Heffernan agreed.
“Kids are competent and capable of impacting the world and we can live in a place where it can be negative, but to empower kids at a really young age to lift each other up is something that we feel strongly about,” she said.
Heffernan, Matusinec and Diljee will accept the award on May 29 at an a ceremony beginning at 7pm in the E. L. Fox Auditorium at John F. Ross CVI in Guelph.
They are planning a separate ceremony for the kindergarten class.
