About the author: Wade Avery, 14, is an eighth-grader at Menlo Middle School in Atherton and a resident of Woodside.
By Wade Avery
As our community service day activity, the Menlo School eighth-grade class on April 3 packed hundreds of care packages and wrote letters to our troops in Iraq. Eighth-grade parents and faculty put together this Soldier Project.
Throughout the previous three weeks, middle school students in all grades were assigned items to bring to school to help fill the care packages. Students were assigned by their teacher advisers to bring in items ranging from toiletries to stuffed animals for the soldiers to give to the Iraqi children.
Items were also given by many private donors: Smart & Final, Safeway, Target, Dr. Scott Kaloust, Best Buy, Skin Spirit, Dr. Marcie Arnesty-Olian, Dr. Honor Fullerton Stone, Borel Private Bank and Trust Co., Drs. Kathy Lee and Shaun Woo, ACCO Management, Dr. Pai, Draeger’s market, and Dr. Connie Ho.
On April 2, each seventh- and eighth-grader wrote about seven letters to the soldiers. The letters had a picture of students holding “Support Our Troops” signs and a personal message from the students that thanked the soldiers for their service.
The following day, instead of going to first period class at 7:50, the eighth-graders met in The Commons for an assembly, where Army troops came to talk to us. They told us how our service project is very important to them, and answered questions about what they did in the Army and what it was like in Iraq.
The students were then shown images of Iraq taken by the soldiers. After that, students overflowed tables with massive amounts of toiletries, snacks, magazines, paperback novels, baseball caps, and stuffed animals for the Iraqi children.
Kids then grabbed small cardboard boxes and thoughtfully selected items to include in their packs. Then students were allowed to have a break, which most of the kids spent in the cockpit of the soldiers’ truck and a Hummer, which they had parked on the lawn.
After that, kids decorated boxes with USA-themed designs. Then the troops loaded up their care packages and were thanked by the students and faculty.
The students had made 500 boxes for the troops in Iraq.
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