A class of young learners at David Brankin Elementary has had a valuable lesson in community outreach following last month's flooding around the province.
The class of kindergartners, taught by Sharon Sehrai, recently sent their support to communities affected by the flooding by crafting cards to accompany relief packages.
The idea came about during one of the weekly Morning Circle' activities held each Monday, where Sehrai encourages her students to discuss their weekends.
"One of the students brought up the floods and how he saw on the news that the waters were getting really high near people's homes and he was really sad about that," she recalled. "I told them that the big flooding wasn't happening here in Surrey, but it is here in Canada and is only about an hour away and many people's homes have been overtaken by water."
Sehrai said it opened up a dialogue about the catastrophe and many students wanted to know how they could help.
"They were so cute and had all these ideas like, We can fly there and pick them up,' or, We can get there with a boat to help them,'" said Sehrai. "It was really sweet, but I said it wasn't really safe for us to do that, so I asked what could we do from here to help?
"After that, one student suggested writing letters to make them feel better, and the idea kind of took off, with one student offering to make envelopes and each student writing a message of I hope you're safe' with their own designs and decorations."
From there, Sehrai said she found a local group doing a callout for new clothes, toys and supplies for flood victims and reached out about passing along the letters to those affected, which will be included in Christmas hampers.
As for the parents of the students, Sehrai said the feedback she's received has been nothing but positive.
"The parents were really happy and were talking about it a lot - they're just so proud of their kids," she said. "These students, these kindergartners are just so pure, they just want to help and it was a small thing that they could do to hopefully make someone else feel better."
by Christopher Poon
