There’s not much time to teach in Jim Strickland’s advisory class at Marysville Junior High School. But that hasn’t kept the kids from learning one of life’s best lessons.
If students remember just one motto from Strickland’s class, they’ll be on their way to making a difference in the world.
“It’s like a homeroom, we meet 15 minutes a day,” said Strickland, a special education teacher who oversees a class of eighth- and ninth-graders in regular education for the school’s advisory program.
That motto – “Find something worth doing and do it” – has been the inspiration for community service projects taken on by his students.
“Last year, we decided to operate on this motto. … It was a way of motivating us,” Strickland said.
What kids decided was worth doing was raising $6,500 for the Starlight Children’s Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works to ease the burdens for seriously ill children and their families.
The money was used to buy two Starlight Fun Centers. Designed for hospital bedside use, the mobile entertainment units contain a Nintendo game cube, a DVD player and large video screen. The two units were donated to the emergency room at Providence Everett Medical Center’s Pacific Campus and the hospital’s Pavilion for Women and Children.
This year, students have again planned something worth doing.
A rock concert from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday in the Marysville Junior High School cafeteria will again benefit the Starlight Children’s Foundation. Admission is $5.
The concert idea originated with Kramer Elwell, a student at the school and drummer in the band Funkalicious Fresh Attack, the show’s opening band.
Other students organizing the concert are Sarah Welliver, Robin Mueller, Bern Osterhaug and Anthony Bayya.
Headlining the show will be Last Romance. The Marysville band took second place this spring at an Experience Music Project band competition in Seattle. Solar Opposites, a recent winner of Marysville-Pilchuck High School’s battle of the bands, also will play.
Choosing their cause, students found encouragement in a secretary at their school. Teresa Thomas, 30, underwent more than a year of treatment for leukemia as a child. She now volunteers with the Starlight foundation.
“I was telling the kids how great those Starlight Fun Centers are,” said Thomas, who spent much of a year when she was 12 at Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle. “As a Starlight volunteer, I’ve seen them being used by kids. It’s just so awesome our kids raised the money.”
Thomas, who grew up in Marysville, missed most of her sixth-grade year. She was schooled by a tutor during treatment for acute myelogenous leukemia. The hardest thing was “just being away from my regular routine,” she said.
“I wouldn’t give in to the thought that I actually had cancer. It was really hard on my family,” Thomas said.
Although she was told treatment would prevent her from being able to have children, she has two, an 8-month-old son and an 8-year-old daughter.
She has never forgotten that other children and families are hurting. Her response to the motto “Find something worth doing and do it” is to help the Starlight foundation with its annual walk, fundraising auctions, parties for teens who have missed proms because of illness and other events.
Thomas is pleased kids at the junior high are answering – loudly – a real need.
“They’re really into this,” she said. “The bands are local. It’s really nice for everybody in the community.”
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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