~and it's a long ways from Grandfield, Oklahoma to Honaunau, Hawaii~

It's a long ways from Grandfield, Oklahoma to Honaunau, Hawaii~3,263 miles of a long ways in fact.  A guy would have to cross 5 time zones to get from one state to the other.  Realizing of course that I've lived a rather sheltered life, I've never taken a vacation there nor even known anyone who called the Island State their home. 

That is until yesterday.

An idea to teach the geographic literacy section of the social studies standards for Oklahoma 2nd graders led me to start a post card collection effort back in January.  Slowly over the last couple of months, various post cards were mailed to our school by dear friends and still others  that we didn't even know of.  Two weeks ago I took a look at what remained of the calendar for our current school year and realized that if we wanted to be able to see a card from each state that we'd need to make a fairly strong push to complete it in this last 9 weeks of the school year.  After putting out a call for anyone that could help us on my own social media page and thanks to the efforts of over 300 people who shared it on their own pages, the cards began to come this week.  One of the cards ended up being from a former Grandfield resident who now calls the Aloha State his home.

After a stack of cards were delivered to our classroom yesterday, we stopped everything we were doing and sat down together to take a look at them.  The card from Hawaii was the third one that I found and when I read where it was from, I was so surprised.

"Oh my goodness you guys!  This one is from Hawaii and it says it is from someone who used to live here in Grandfield!" I told the kids.

They could sense the excitement in their teacher's voice because I have told them all along that I felt the two most difficult states to get them from would be Rhode Island and Hawaii, mostly because I have absolutely zero connections with anyone from that pair of locations.  To actually find that someone had taken the time to send a card to the kids from a place so far away warmed my teacher's heart and provided some renewed energy at the end of a very busy Friday afternoon.

During the past 40 years of being an educator, mostly in Kansas but also in the states of Colorado, Texas and now Oklahoma, I've been asked many times by folks what they could do to help children and their teachers.  I was always humbled to encounter those who would want to assist in any way that they could.  Once I even made a list of things that I could hand to those people, a checklist of sorts that would give them some good ideas they might be able to do.  I tried to think of things that wouldn't cost too much money and also to balance the list with an equal share of the thing that is the most precious gift of all.

~the gift of time~

The list went like this.
~Agree to mentor a student for a 9-weeks or even a whole school year.
~Eat lunch with a class of students once a month and actually sit at their table and listen to their conversations, joining in with your table talk.
~Go shopping at the beginning of school in August and in January as well for pencils, erasers, glue sticks, colors, or scissors and take them to your neighborhood school for use in the teachers' classrooms.
~Gather up gently used books and take them to a classroom for their own personal library because kids are voracious readers.  They need access to every book they can get their hands on.
~Participate in classroom projects any way that you can.  Gathering post cards is a great example of one way you can do that.
~Save those little box tops that come on certain products and take them to the office of a school that collects them for redemption.  They may only be worth a thin dime each, but many hands collecting them can make a huge impact on schools whose budgets are already stretched onion skin thin long before year's end.
~Choose a class and their teacher. Send them a card once a month to say you are thinking of them and say a prayer for them while you are at it.  Believe me, we need all of those that we can get.

All it took to bring a smile to this old teacher's face was the cost of a post card, stamp, a little bit of time, and the desire to make a difference in the lives of Oklahoma children and their teacher.  Thank you Vince for helping us out!

We are well over half the way there in our quest to complete our project and I have no doubt that we will receive the ones we need.

Even Rhode Island~