Schools

West Tisbury School Turkey Drive

Students donate 40 complete turkey dinners to those in need

The students at the understand what it means to be a part of a community. Today, student council members delivered 40 boxes to the . In each box were the ingredients for a complete Thanksgiving meal, including a turkey, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce and more. Furthermore, each item came from the generous offerings of every student at the West Tisbury School.

For the past 18 years, Robyn Wingate, social studies teacher for 7th and 8th grade, has worked with the student council to make the Turkey Drive happen, along with the support of the whole school. “It’s a really good tradition,” said Wingate. “I love that this is a whole school effort to help the community.”

Here’s how it works: In the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, every grade is assigned an item – boxed mashed potatoes, canned vegetables, cranberry sauce, gravy, etc. Every kid from each grade is then asked to bring in one or two of their designated item. donates the turkeys and then, the day before delivery, the items are separated out into boxes that in the end contain a complete meal.

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Student council members then deliver the boxes to MVCS, who in turn give them to clients in need. Mary Jean Connelly, Special Events Coordinator at MVCS was on hand today to help with the delivery. “I’ve been doing this for at least ten years with the kids from West Tisbury,” said Connelly. “All of our recipients are confidential, but I know sometimes the families write thank you notes to the kids and that really means a lot to them.”

The first year, they started out with twelve boxes of whatever they could put together. “We ended up feeding 40 families through community services and four West Tisbury School families,” said Wingate of this year’s program.

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Eight grader Aurora Austin, said that gathering and delivering the food made her think about what is important. “We think a lot about how we don’t have - the best cell phone or the best stuff and then there are people who don’t have enough for food.”

Hadley Chapman, also in eighth grade said, “It means a lot to donate and give back to my community.”

And finally, 7th grader Louis Neville summed it up with a slight shrug. “It feels really good to help.”


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