BY CHRIS LAFORTUNE
STAFF WRITER
As the new school year approaches and thoughts turn to buying school supplies for the coming year, students at River Forest's Lincoln School found a good way to put their supplies from last school year to use.
The fourth grade community service club at Lincoln, Heartworks, collected used but usable school supplies from fellow students at the end of last year, donating them to the group Teach America.
Teach America places teachers in schools that have trouble finding staff, usually schools in underprivileged areas, parent and Heartworks Co-Chairwoman Barbara Hickey said.
Teachers at those schools usually have to pay for supplies for students, Hickey said, spending their own money.
"It seemed like a great fit for us," Hickey said.
Parent and Co-Chairwoman Christie Hunt said the Lincoln PTO provides school supply packages to parents who purchase them at the start of each year. Often, supplies in those packages make it through the school year in good enough shape to use again.
"We thought it would be nice to recapture those instead of sending them to the trash bin or to the back of the cupboard, to be able to give kids who, many times, come to school without any supplies at all," Hunt said.
Heartworks students collected the school supplies in garbage bags, sorting through them on the last full day of school June 9 and packaging them to give to Teach America.
Incoming fifth grade student Tom Jozefowicz sharpened pencils throughout the day.
"There were thousands of pencils," Jozefowicz said. "We probably had a whole garbage bag full of pencils."
An electric pencil sharpener broke, so students used some of the donated manual sharpeners to finish off the job, Jozefowicz said.
Incoming fifth grade student Annie Hunt helped sharpen colored pencils for the supply drive. Other students tested markers and pencil sharpeners to make sure they're still good.
Helping people made incoming fifth grade student Jessica Klugman feel good about herself, she said. She enjoyed working with her friends - and she got to miss class that afternoon.
"It was a lot of fun, and I loved it," Klugman said
Between 40 and 60 students volunteer in Heartworks each year, Hickey said, usually meeting before school or during lunch. Its other works last year included the annual used book drive, a program to meet with veterans on Veteran's Day, and writing letters to a medical unit in Iraq.
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