FOR THE past 20 years or so, pupils at Trinity School in Ellicott City have collected toys for Parents and Children Together, or PACT Inc., a Baltimore charity.
In past years, the Trinity children took toys to school and placed them in boxes in their homerooms. Then parent volunteers would deliver them to the PACT offices.
This year, though, organizer Dee Bumbera decided to do something different. Bumbera, a parent volunteer who has two children at Trinity, decided to include the pupils in the delivery.
"I decided that this year I wanted the children involved in this act of not only collecting the toys but distributing the toys," she said. "I wanted the children to have an understanding of who they were helping and what kind of good they were doing."
Trinity pupils in grades five through eight saw a videotape about PACT and how the nonprofit organization helps children with special needs. Then the students were put in charge of the toy-collection effort.
They got on the school's public-address system each morning to remind their classmates to bring in toys. They also made posters and collected the toys each day.
The results were impressive.
This year, children filled 41 lawn-and-leaf-sized trash bags with toys, up from about 30 bags last year. And, Tuesday, they rode in seven minivans to deliver the toys to PACT.
"I would attribute it to the children being the leadership of this program and doing much more awareness within the school," Bumbera said. "I just think their involvement increased awareness and increased participation."
The pupils who were most actively involved included sixth-graders Hannah Bands, Molly Bumbera, Anne Marie DiGerolamo, Rachel Harbarger, Jennifer Karkoska, Eilleen Lane and Shelby Powell - all members of Girl Scout Troop 1233; fifth-graders Siobhan Cooney, Megan Lentz, Courtney Norjen and Amy Scheel, members of Girl Scout Troop 755; second-graders Erin Bumbera and Rachel Norjen of Girl Scout Troop 149; and kindergartner Stephanie Culotta.
Deep Run fund-raiser
Deep Run Elementary School Principal Fran Donaldson was led away from the school in handcuffs Dec. 12. But she wasn't in trouble with the law. She was helping raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
Donaldson and other business and community leaders participated in the fund-raising event by collecting money ahead of time that was supposed to be used for "bail."
Carroll Roles, a member of the Howard County Sheriff's office, went to the school and led Donaldson away, said Meg Ducey, who is in charge of the school's public relations.
Instead of jail, though, Donaldson and other participants went for lunch at Don Pablo's. "They weren't actually locked up. They were treated quite nicely, in fact," Ducey said.
The school raised $828 for muscular dystrophy through the event.
Scholarship winner
Kristin Stickles, daughter of Kevin Stickles of Mount Airy and Regina Hillman of Elkridge, was one of six Shippensburg University students to win a full-tuition scholarship from a new project called the Collaborative for Excellence in Teacher Preparation in Pennsylvania.
The project, funded by the National Science Foundation, chooses scholars from 14 of Pennsylvania's state universities to participate in workshops and seminars on teaching math and science.
Stickles, a senior, is an elementary education major with a mathematics minor.