The Bailey Lake Elementary cafeteria was filled with cheers and screams of excitement as students and teachers alike celebrated the results of their Academic Service Learning (ASL) project during an assembly on May 11.
The assembly included skits from students highlighting the accomplishments they achieved over the past two weeks, which had garnered the attention of many celebrities. Students portrayed such stars as WWE wrestler John Cena, pop singer Miley Cyrus, basketball player Lebron James as well as presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
According to fifth grade teacher Robert Brazier, the ASL project came while doing a water bottle drive earlier in the year for Flint. Brazier said they learned students and schools in Flint had more pressing needs than just water.
“In fact there were a couple other needs that the students of Flint specifically had, mainly school supplies,” Brazier said. “So we responded and decided to pursue that route.”
So as apart of their ASL project this year, Bailey Lake decided to collect everything from paper, pens, pencils, markers and folders to give to Flint’s Freeman Elementary.
“We talk a lot about this question, how do I impact our world and how can I make a difference,” Brazier said. “The question collectively came about ‘what can we collectively do to help our fellow Americans?’”
The fifth-graders, he said, were charged with publicizing the project, which had included an assembly last month to launch the project, morning announcements, as well as students going to Office Depot and Neiman’s Family Market asking for donations.
“There were skits going on at lunch time, the cheer squad would go out after school at the bus line and parent pickup

and remind people about the project. We did sidewalk chalk. It was all over the place,” Brazier added. “I think they did a terrific job at making sure everybody knew.”
Whether it was writing letters to local businesses asking for donations, collecting all the supplies and sorting them, counting them and graphing them, every grade had a part to play. The project was split into two-weeks. The first week was school supply drive and the second week was the coin drive. Students raised over $1,000 for the coin drive.
“The kids who went to Office Depot and Neiman’s asking for donations were the same kids who got to go on a shopping spree with the $1,000 to buy more supplies to send,” Brazier said.
While K-4 grades focused on collecting school supplies, Brazier said the fifth grade teachers assembled thousands of books to send to Freeman as well.
“They don’t have any books,” he said. “We found out their library has fewer books than my classroom library.”
Brazier added students wrote letters to all the fifth grade parents asking for them to pretend they had a kid in Flint, so when they did a Scholastic book order to write in a new child and call him “Bobby Flint” or “Danny Flint” and any of the books with those names would be thrown into the book basket to be sent.
“What was important for me was the students felt like it was their project. They played a large part in shaping what it became. I feel like the fifth graders took their charge to rally the school seriously. They did it effectively and it meant a lot to them,” Brazier added. “Collectively we did something pretty cool. That’s gratifying for me, if they walk away from this classroom with the idea that ‘a group of people can make a difference,’ then I did my job.”