Wednesday, January 31, 2007
RAHKIA NANCE
News staff writer

Using an idea from kindergartners' celebrations of the 100th day of school, Brookville Elementary School teacher Dana Shepard decided to bring the festivities to first grade, but with a twist. Since students were in first-grade, they would celebrate the 101st day of school. On Thursday, the school's three first-grade teachers tied '101' into the curriculum in almost every possible way. Students sat in silence for 101 seconds to experience the lapse of time. They collected 101 stickers to visualize the number as a quantity. The day's celebration included a showing of the Walt Disney film "101 Dalmatians."

In keeping with lessons about community service and mammals, the students were also challenged to collect 101 cans of dog food for The Emergency Animal Rescue Service, a nonprofit animal rescue group. During the two-week drive the students doubled their goal, collecting 244 cans of dog food for the group. "It just blew my mind," Shepard said of the response to the dog food drive. Shepard said the outpouring probably stemmed from children's natural inclination toward caring and animals. The drive may have become personal for at least one student, whose family dog was nursed back to health by TEARS staff, Shepard said. The dog had been run over by a car and left for dead. She began planning the event during Christmas break, and shared her idea with fellow first-grade teachers Lindsay Nixon and Ivy Ivey. "We thought it would be better to find an organization we could collect an item for instead of raising money," Ivey said. "Money's hard to come by but it's not that hard to go out and buy a can of dog food." This is the first year the teachers hosted the program and Shepard said she is thinking of expanding the program to the entire school which serves students kindergarten through fifth grade. The easiest thing for them to do, since they can't really go out and perform a service, is to help someone less fortunate, Shepard said. It's fun, but it's educational.