Service Projects

• With the International Headquarters, celebrate the annual Week of the Classroom Teacher. This event, sponsored by the Association, is held the first week of May. Sample celebration ideas and proclamations are included in this manual.
• Sponsor children's art and creative writing displays in malls.
• Sponsor a children's or family day at the mall. Invite other groups to participate.
• Develop a resource library of ACEI materials, books, toys, games, and other materials, etc. for use by members and nonmembers. Have it easily accessible.
• Sponsor story-telling hours after school at a school library or in a shopping center/mall.
• Set up a tutoring program.
• Sponsor plays for children utilizing junior and senior high school drama departments.
• Have experienced teachers plan one night a month to share with new teachers or student teachers their lesson plans, bulletin board ideas, tips on parent-teacher conferences, and tried-and-true teaching aids.
• Collect lost and unclaimed clothing articles at end of year, wash and repair them, and redistribute them to needy children through school nurses, social workers, Head Start teachers, etc.
• Sponsor food drives and/or a needy family throughout the year.
• Contribute items to neighboring child care centers that service your school. Ask them what they can use. Ask them to join ACEI, if you haven't already!
• Provide student scholarships for summer camps and special day programs. Funnel these through social workers.
• Make up individual student boxes of required school supplies at the beginning of the school year and contribute to a battered women's center, homeless families, migrant families, etc. Distribute through schools or social service agencies. Most supplies can be obtained free from stores. (Stores may ask you for a letter stating the use of the supplies, which they can send to their home office or use for income tax purposes.)
• Make math and reading games and other instructional materials for area schools.
• Arrange an "Open House" program at a museum of art where members may visit special exhibitions and permanent collections, following a presentation by some authority in the field.
• Host a reception for intern teachers, their master teachers, and the school administrators with whom they work.
• Obtain articles that may be auctioned off at a "Celebrity Auction," such as cartoons, comic books, clothing of famous persons, antiques, records, and articles once owned by celebrities. Be sure to publicize this as an event that seeks funds for a worthwhile educational purpose.
• "Staff the phones" for a local telethon for some special event or cause such as Muscular Dystrophy.
• Contact the local Red Cross branch, volunteering for an activity that will be of service.
• Plan a "Career Day" for underprivileged children. Have members whose majors represent different disciplines (teaching, marketing, law, medicine, agriculture, accounting, music, art or biology) discuss with the children the careers open through these various majors, and the likelihood of their future employment.
• Maintain a college/university display case that features Branch highlights, awards, programs, and activities.
• Prepare cassette tapes of textbook readings for blind students.
• Organize a book drive for a particular library. Publicize your need for books, and the kind of books that are needed. Arrange to pick up books when necessary, and be certain to thank all donors in some appropriate way.
• Prepare an annotated list of children's books to distribute to parents.
• Sponsor a literacy project to help adults who are not able to read.
• Publish a survival guide for first-year educators--provide first-year teachers with Survival Kits.
• Give out teacher appreciation awards.
• Sponsor a Brown Bag Buddy who will eat lunch and talk with a student on a weekly/monthly basis at school.

Content Copyright 2002 by the Association for Childhood Education International. All rights reserved

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