“Operation Cheer Up,” an after-school club sponsored by Brown Elementary School teachers Pete Kain and Dawn Probst, challenged the staff and students to participate in a “Souper Bowl,” a canned food drive supporting a local food pantry.
The school set its goal of 2,300 cans based on collecting 2,215 cans last year. “We donate the food to the TEAM food pantry located in Florissant,” Probst said. “We collected a total of 2,678 items, the most we've ever collected. Kim Kinsel's third grade class brought in the most donations, 329. They earned a pizza and ice cream party. Because we beat our goal of 2,300 items, our principal awarded all classrooms a popcorn party.”
A record total did not appear likely until Matt Phillips, the school’s principal, pulled out all of the stops and increased incentives.
“We were off to a slow start,” Probst said. “With one day left and only 1,416 items donated, Mr. Phillips took the suggestion of Ariana Gaydon, a fifth-grade member of Operation Cheer Up, and increased the reward. Instead of winning a popcorn party, the classroom with the most donations would win a pizza party along with an ice cream treat (including sprinkles). That incentive, along with a phone blast message to parents from Mr. Phillips, energized the Brown community and helped us to exceed our donation goal.”
Operation Cheer Up is an after-school club of 30 fifth-graders who are committed to service projects in our community, Probst explained. The members coordinate the Souper Bowl food drive at Brown every year; they collect, count and pack the donations from each classroom. The benefits that they gain include knowing they are helping families right in our very own community to get a healthy and hearty meal. Probst recounted the actions and words of students and parents as they collected donations.
“I remember student Noor Alyasiry sitting in the middle of all of the donations the last day, busily packing them into boxes and commenting, ‘Wow, Miss Probst, a lot of people aren’t going to be hungry anymore because of us.’
“A first-grade student brought in one can of green beans and said, ‘I know it's only one can, but at least someone will have something to eat,’” she said. “A mother and grandmother of one of our students pulled their car up to the front of the school and unloaded 82 items, saying that they cleaned out their pantries with their children and they needed to head to the store to restock their own home.”
Each class was challenged to bring in the most canned food. An entire wall in the cafeteria was adorned with a drawing of a football field and used footballs to create graphs that told students how many items their class brought and so each class could work on bringing in the highest number of items.