Brockbank first-grade students recently spent an afternoon giving back to the community. Their teachers had shared with them the story of "Listen to the Wind" by Greg Mortensen and Susan Roth. This story is about boys and girls in Pakistan who built their own school with the help and direction of Greg Mortensen, an American nurse who had come into the country for humanitarian purposes but lost his way on a journey. He found himself lost, sick, and injured in the mountains where a small mountain village took him in and nursed him to health. He saw the children writing with sticks on the ground from lessons they received 3 times a week from a visiting teacher. He returned to the village of Korphe and helped organize and construct the building of a school and arrange for a teacher to be placed there permanently. Brockbank students were touched by the story of Mr. Mortensen and were anxious to help those in need like Mr. Mortensen did. As temperatures are so bitter cold this time of year, first graders wanted everybody to be able to be warm. With a grant awarded from the Service Learning program, Brockbank first graders made fleece scarfs to donate to a local homeless shelter. Students wrote a note inside of each scarf letting the receipient know that his/her scarf was made with love from a child who wanted to share.
