Oakwood Country School knows how to host a pumpkin pie party.
The cafeteria was brimming with its students, staff and parents
sitting at banquet table after banquet table. The pie was already
sliced and plated. The centerpiece of the celebration, however, was
the school’s thoughtful donation to needy families in Morgan Hill:
122 30-gallon plastic bins packed with food and each with a $20
gift card to a grocery store.
Oakwood Country School knows how to host a pumpkin pie party. The cafeteria was brimming with its students, staff and parents sitting at banquet table after banquet table. The pie was already sliced and plated. The centerpiece of the celebration, however, was the school’s thoughtful donation to needy families in Morgan Hill: 122 30-gallon plastic bins packed with food and each with a $20 gift card to a grocery store.
The stacks of bins – appropriately in fall shades and donated thanks to Wal-Mart – were piled in the epicenter of the afternoon assembly Friday. They formed a 3-foot tall circle around a separate board game drive that brought in 232 games.
“This is what makes Morgan Hill a community, it’s when we all work together,” principal Patty Crone said.
Parent and volunteer Myra Winthagen said that if every Oakwood family donated the two food items that were asked of them, it would be enough to create 65 food bins.
“Everyone has gone way above and beyond,” Winthagen said. She’s been running the Thanksgiving donation for the last five years, though the school has been donating for 13. Last year, Oakwood donated 109 food bins.
“We had to best last year,” Winthagen said.
Lisa DeSilva, from Community Solutions, a nonprofit that supports struggling families in South County, was on hand to accept the bins, which Community Solutions distributed Friday to families.
“You don’t get to see this, but the faces of the people who get the boxes is so awesome,” DeSilva told the standing-room only cafeteria. “Some people say, well children can’t really help, but I say, your bodies may be smaller, but your hearts are just as big (as adults’),” she said.
To the surprise of everyone in the room, Vernon Parker, the store manager from Wal-Mart in Gilroy, presented Community Solutions with a $1,000 donation.
In Oakwood’s first try at a schoolwide (that’s preschool through high school) Thanksgiving celebration they orchestrated a full and complete Thanksgiving dinner with turkey, stuffing, yams, pie and “everything you could want,” Winthagen said. “It was just too over the top.”
“It was just a waste. We realized we could more to help others and just have some pumpkin pie instead,” she said.
And that choice certainly didn’t phase the children, who gobbled the pie and washed it down with ice-cream sandwiches.
One class applied their study of the colonial period in America quite literally. Girls wore bonnets, long sleeves and ankle-length dresses and boys sported knickers and high socks with their tennis shoes.
No technology was used all day, even the lights in their classroom. Boys and girls were separated. When an adult walked in, they stood and bowed.
“They spent the day very focused,” said Aaron Thompson, a co-teacher with Michelle Beske, of the fifth-grade class. Thompson and Beske dressed in period clothing as well.
At lunch, the class could not use plastic, since it didn’t exist at the time and played games like tic-tac-toe and marbles. No backpacks were allowed and lunch consisted of beef jerky or other meats.
Eleven-year-old Madison Gong said spending the day as a pilgrim really made her think.
“The colonial experience showed us how fortunate we are to have technology and electricity and water, and not have to fetch water out of the well. I’m very appreciative,” she said.
