…Christmas is a magical time of year for children all around the world and LFCS is no different. Holiday celebrations are marked with a variety of activities, including cultural celebrations of food, singing programs, art projects, gift making, along with gift exchanging. Enchanted moments reading classic literature that children have loved for decades bring smiles and squeals of glee as little people and not so little people (high school students) transport themselves to the special places of the heart, that this time of year celebrates.
Among the most favored of traditions at Literacy First is our Family Adoption program. A number of LFCS families are identified as being families that we can “bless” at Christmas. The reasons vary from specific financial need to emotional support due to some specific situation or circumstance. Specifics are sleuthed out regarding clothing sizes and member of the family living in the household. The families are then divided up among our classes. The students and teachers have no idea who the families they have been given are. The specific families have no idea that they have been “chosen” to be one of our LFCS gifted families!
Throughout the month of December, students bring in gifts specific to their family and the entire school is bringing in non-perishable food goods. On the morning of the last day of school before our school community goes out for the holiday break, one by one each class brings their gifts as they practice the art of being a “giver”. Each student is carrying some sort of gift or food item. It is a precious site to watch as our students one by one begin to learn the valuable lesson of “giving” rather than only receiving.
At the end of the process the gifts are stacked high and wide. The food is divvied up equally among the families and the phone calls are made. It is an emotion laden hour or so as family by family, individually come to “receive” what has been given. It is a mixture of joy and tears, shock and awe as families realize that the Christmas they thought they may not have, has just been provided! Literacy First has been doing this “GIFTING” for over 15 years now. Every year it is just as powerful and just as precious; both for the givers and the receivers. It is truly the most precious part of Christmas as the unspoken words truly validate the heart of this season: the wonder of Christmas.
These lessons of character are ongoing and always for the students of Literacy First Charter Schools
