The Washington Middle School Concert Band performs a mashup of traditional Christmas songs at their annual Winter Concert.
The Mobile Food Lab visited Washington Middle School!
Students learned about vertical farming and healthy eating.
Washington Middle School students attend the Metrowest Holocaust Remembrance Conference with Holocaust survivor Fred Heyman.
SHOES FOR A CAUSE
by Laura Comppen
There's a lot more space in the closets of Harrison residents these days as Washington Middle School students have been feverishly collecting used shoes since October—3,209 pairs to be exact (that's 6,418 individual shoes!).
The WMS Environmental Club, under the direction of World Language teacher, Amanda Kartanowicz, has been collaborating with Funds2orgs in collecting the shoes as a combination community service project and fundraiser for the Washington Middle School Parent Teacher Organization (PTO).
Funds2orgs is an organization that focuses on economic sustainability in developing countries by providing the donated shoes for impoverished families to sell or repurpose—representing an opportunity to develop microenterprises within their communities. This empowers the community to be less reliant on charity and to experience true self-sustainability. The added bonus is that it also helps keep discarded shoes out of landfills in the United States, where they create health hazards due to the chemical compounds used in shoe manufacturing.
The original goal was 2500 pairs of shoes. As the pickup dated neared, the 18 members of the Environmental Club who had spent countless hours sorting, counting and packaging the shoes, revealed they were 300+ pairs short. With an urgent loudspeaker message to meet the goal, students arrived to school the next day with over 1100 pairs of shoes! That's 1100 pairs of shoes collected...in one day!
“I'm not surprised that our students came through on this service project. Everyone has shoes they don't wear anymore so it was easy for our students to collect them. That this project not only helps people in other countries, but raises funds for our PTO, well that's just a great learning experience for all of our students”, said Mike Landy, principal at Washington Middle School.
New This Year. Log onto to the WMS Sportsblog. All reports and stories are created by Washington Middle School students.
Washington Middle School was the recipient of the Rubbell Scholarship. 45 Students were awarded a class trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. The scholarship is named after Michael Rubbell who was a Holocaust survivor. The students were accompanied by two Holocaust survivors for the entire trip.
Mr. Harold Stahl, Harrison's Head of OEM (Office of Emergency Management) addresses WMS students about his first hand experiences on 9/11.
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