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Getting Involved: Classes at Mount Tabor High collect clothing, toys and other goods to send to Afghanistan
Journal Photo by Jennifer Rotenizer
Teacher Laurie Schaefer removes a box from storage to be sent to Afghanistan. After students read the book My Forbidden Face, they were motivated to help.
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Published: November 1, 2008
Fifty-two boxes of school supplies, winter clothing and toys sit in Laurie Schaefer's classroom at Mount Tabor High School.
Schaefer and Emily Bennett's 10th-grade World Literature classes spent two weeks collecting the items, which will be shipped to Kabul, Afghanistan.
Now, Schaefer and the students are raising money to get the boxes to Kabul. They have raised about $500 so far, but Schaefer estimates they'll need to raise at least $500 more.
Over the summer, Schaefer's students read My Forbidden Face: Growing Up Under the Taliban: A Young Woman's Story, a book about a 16-year-old girl's life in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
In the book, an aspiring journalist writes under the pen name Latifa about her life during a five-year period before her family fled Afghanistan for France in 2001.
Latifa wrote about the cruelties inflicted upon women -- whippings for wearing white shoes and being forced to be covered when in public.
After reading the book, the students wanted to do something to help Afghans.
"As a teacher, I wanted my students to be able to make the connection with somebody across the world and not just talk about it," Schaefer said. "I wanted them to become active. I figured this would be a way to do it."
The students' living conditions described in the book and the Taliban's attempts to regain control prompted the students to send care packages.
Schaefer researched organizations on the Internet and found "… a little help," a nonprofit organization that works to improve the lives of women and girls in Afghanistan.
A parent donated boxes after moving, and they soon started filling up. The students want to send all of the packages by Thanksgiving.
Shaefer spent part of her teacher workday yesterday counting and sorting the items and making lists of the boxes' contents.
Students are looking forward to seeing photos of the items they collected being distributed and used, said Eric Hatch, a Mount Tabor sophomore.
"That would be awesome," Hatch said. "They said that they would send us pictures of them using our stuff. I can't wait to see those pictures, to see all my old clothes and shoes being used for a good cause."
Hatch, 16, and a friend went through their closets and things one night to donate items for the packages.
"I had no idea how brutal the Taliban was and how much violence and poverty actually existed over there," he said. "We got about 160 or so items for the project and we donated to that project. It was mostly like kids' clothes and jeans and blankets."
Martha Land, the principal at Mount Tabor, said that the care-package project was one of many that Schaefer and other teachers use throughout the year to connect students with the world around them.
"Ms. Shaefer has a way of inspiring kids to look at the big picture of a lot of things and then she just kind of winds that into the curriculum she teaches," Land said. "She, like many of the teachers here, have tried to get the kids to understand other people's needs and understand how they can impact and help.
"I'm anxious to see if we hear anything back from Afghanistan."
Students focused mainly on collecting school supplies, Schaefer said.
"When we actually started our unit talking about Afghanistan, we looked at pictures of what schools looked like in Afghanistan and it's intense, sitting on the ground with very little materials and just the basic things like paper and pencil," Schaefer said.
■ Lisa Boone-Wood can be reached at 727-7232 or at lboone-wood@wsjournal.com.
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