HANCEVILLE, Ala. – For the second year, students at Hanceville High School will be able to experience one of Christmas’ greatest joys- giving. For the past couple of months, the high school students were encouraged to bring in a toy to be given to Hanceville Elementary School students. Each high school student will give an elementary student a gift and create a lifelong memory by doing so.
The idea came to Hanceville High School theater teacher and Leo Club Advisor Tina Weldon last year, she explained, “Our school, we have a lot of students who are low income and I felt like, with a lot of our kids, they’ve never been given the opportunity to really feel what it feels like to give someone else something. That’s the whole joy of the holidays. It is for me. It feels good to do something for someone else.”
Last year with the help of the Hanceville Leo Club, more than 600 toys were collected and wrapped for the younger students at the elementary school. The entire high school student body then lined up in the hallway as the elementary students arrived to receive their presents.
The younger kids were thrilled, and Weldon observed, “My high school students, the looks on their faces and the excitement they exhibited, it was so heartwarming.”
This year, with COVID-19 and the schools adhering to a hybrid schedule, Weldon was fearful that they wouldn’t be able to pull off the gift exchange. The elementary teachers soon began reaching out to say their students were asking if the gift exchange would happen again. Weldon told them, “We will get this done!”
Knowing the year has been difficult on families, she braced herself for a slow response. What happened next was quite the opposite. Gifts began pouring in, as did offers from the high school kids to help in any way possible. More than 600 gifts were quickly donated by the student body and the Leo Club has been spending extra time at school making sure the gifts are properly divided by age/grade level and wrapped for their young friends.
Weldon added, “Right now we have all 600 gifts wrapped and we have students that still want to help. Yesterday, students began bringing in new shoes, coats and all kinds of things just to reach out and help their fellow classmates who would not get a Christmas otherwise. It’s so, so exciting and the kids, I couldn’t be more proud of them. Hanceville is a really special place to be, and the kids don’t seem to form the cliques like they seem to do in other schools. The empathy they have toward others, I can’t even explain how sweet it is.”
Next week, the gift exchange will take place, but due to the hybrid schedule, two days will be needed to make sure each high school student is able to participate. The giving is the emphasis of the project and the opportunity for the older students to better understand the positive impact they can have on the younger students.
“The things that happen to you in elementary school, the people you encounter and the way you are treated, it sticks with you for a lifetime,” Weldon said. “I don’t know that we are necessarily teaching generosity, but being a role model for that and setting an example really makes a difference. My high school kids who bring in toys, they are just beaming. They come in and it’s like they are carrying a pot of gold even though it’s just Dollar Tree toys. You can tell they feel like they are making a difference, and that’s important.”
Weldon hopes these types of projects make school a fun and safe place to be for all the students. The wrapped gift might be a toy, but the real gift is the interaction between the kids as they experience the joy of giving.
Smiled Weldon, “They all love it SO much.”
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