By Valerie Orner, Educational Journalist
On the first day of school, I presented my students with a community service goal which tied into the Iditarod Rookie Project. We were going to raise money for our rookie musher, Kim Darst and all the money that was over our goal would be given to our local animal shelter. I called it “Cans for Miles”. After all, how hard could it be to collect cans and bottles! My class calculated the number of miles from Kim’s hometown in Blairstown, New Jersey to the Iditarod finish in Nome. Using Yahoo Maps, we calculated it was 5,413 miles. Our goal then was to collect 5,413 five cent cans. September through January we collected five cent cans. Unfortunately, our goal was not met. We collected 1, 837 cans during those months. Boy, talk about a great lesson on goal setting. My students realized that sometimes, we set goals and they aren’t always achieved. We talked about what we could have done differently and how sometimes we set goals in life that are hard to attain. I tied this in with how Kim Darst may have felt knowing that she would not achieve her goal this year of getting to Nome. Many of the students were disappointed when they knew we wouldn’t be able to donate any money to the animal shelter, so I told them I would match their hard work so that Kim and the animal shelter would get a piece of their hard work.
Not to be undone by our rookie project, my class learned about Four Paws for Logan from the Iditarod website. Now this is our new service project. We are collecting five cent returnable cans to raise money for a service dog for Logan. Did we set a goal? You bet we did!
