Fifth-grade fundraisers pull it off

For teacher Sarah Newell, the school year ended last week with tattoos and tears at Thomas Jefferson Middle School in Port Washington.

“With the kids lined up and ready to leave on the last day of school, I looked at them and thought, ‘When will I ever have another class like this,’ and the tears just started flowing down my face,” she said. “There were a lot of tears this year, tears of joy.”

The students who touched Newell so deeply were fifth graders in classes taught by her and her partner teacher Barbara Papamarcos who, inspired by a Christmas gift from one of their classmates to Newell, launched a fundraiser no one saw coming.

Just after the winter break, the students kicked off the effort they branded Students Leading the Charge for a Cure and set a goal of raising $5,000 by summer to benefit Breakthrough T1D, a nonprofit organization dedicated to finding a cure for Type  1 diabetes — a disease Newell knows all too well. Her daughter Sophie, who just completed her sophomore year at Port Washington High School, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes four years ago.

The donations started pouring in — many directly from the students’ piggy banks — and the $5,000 goal was eclipsed in short order. So the students set a new goal of $7,500 and focused on their end-of-the-school-year fundraising event — Tattoo a Teacher.

With the Jaguar Parent Group jumping in to help, students had the opportunity to buy temporary tattoos  — including one of their principal Nick DeBaker’s head  — for the teachers and administrators of their choosing, who then came to school last week fully tatted.

“We were covered in tattoos,” Newell said. “The kids loved it. They had so much fun.”

The proceeds from the event, which will be split by the parent group and Students Leading the Charge for a Cure, as well as money raised during a unique marathon held last month, will undoubtedly shatter another one of the students’ goals.

“They met their first goal with flying colors, but instead of stopping, they raised it to $7,500,” Newell said. “My guess is that by the time the proceeds from the tattoos and run are added up, they will have raised more than $8,000.

“These are fifth-graders. That’s amazing.”

The fundraising effort was inspired by a Christmas card Newell received from one of her students. Inside was $40 and a handwritten note from fifth-grader Ella McManus.

“I remember thinking about what to give my teacher for Christmas, and I remember Mrs. Newell talking about wanting to run a marathon,” Ella said in February.

Newell’s students know her daughter lives with Type 1 diabetes, and at one point during the school year she mentioned to her class that she wanted to run a marathon to raise money for diabetes research.

“My class knows I run marathons, and randomly in conversation I mentioned that if I raise enough money I could run the New York City Marathon,” Newell said, adding that while her times in the five marathons she has under her belt are not nearly good enough to qualify her for such an elite race, runners can also qualify for the New York City Marathon by raising money for charities.

Inside her card to her teacher, Ella wrote, “A few weeks ago I heard that you were raising money for Type 1 diabetes. The $40 is a donation,” adding at the bottom of the card, “Thank you for being an amazing teacher! You are so sweet! Even though during math games you ‘cheat,’ you still are an amazing teacher.”

Newell said, “That was $40 of her own money. I just cried.”

She shared Ella’s card with her class and Students Leading the Charge for a Cure was born.

“A girl donated $50. A boy donated $70 he earned cutting grass all summer. He said, ‘I feel like people who are struggling need this more than me.’ Today, a child brought in all the money in his piggy bank,” Newell said in February. “These are 10-year-old children. I’m sorry, but when I was 10 there was no way I was going to give away my money.

“This is not something in our curriculum. It’s my job to raise this money, certainly not the job of my students, but these two classes are filled with amazing children.”

Overcome by the generosity and empathy of students, Newell decided it would be selfish of her to run the marathon as she originally planned.

“I decided not to run the New York City Marathon because it didn’t seem right for the students who are working so hard on this not to be able to participate,” she said.

Instead, on May 16, Newell and fellow Thomas Jefferson Middle School teacher Sandy Crain, who participated to benefit spina bifida research, ran a full 26.2-mile marathon around the Port Washington High School track.

Students gathered at the track to cheer their teachers on. Some joined Newell and Crain for a few laps. Others sold wares and treats at a makers market and bake sale. The parent group ran the concession stand and donations were received from organizations and businesses that included the Port Washington Lions Club, Kwik Trip and Starbucks.

“This was really a celebration of all the work students had done,” Newell said. “Honestly, they did just about everything. It took very little extra time from Barbara (Papamarcos) and I.”

The students essentially started a fundraising business and found all sorts of ways to contribute.

Kinsley Jungbauer sold figurines during lunch periods that were made on a 3D printer by her aunt. Her aunt, Kinsley explained, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was in eighth grade.

“That was a really big change for my family,” she said.

Jackson Harmelink designed a “We Run for Type 1” T-shirt for students to wear during the May 16 marathon.

Groups of fifth-graders made presentations during lunch periods to involve the rest of their school in the effort.

Hope Wojcik was in charge of marketing, and she knew that if Students Leading the Charge for a Cure was going to meet its lofty goals, the community was going to have to get involved.

“We knew from the beginning we wanted to get the fundraiser beyond just TJ, so we decided we would try to get an article in Ozaukee Press,” Hope told the Port Washington-Saukville School Board last month during a presentation about the fundraising effort.

In a polished story pitch to the Press, Hope wrote, “Our class has become a small business, splitting into teams such as marketing, T-shirt making, morning announcements, advertising and donation gathering, to name a few.”

A reporter interviewed the students and a story ran in the Feb. 12 edition of the paper.

“The next week we found a big headline — ‘Fundraiser is a class act,’” Hope told the board. “We were so excited.”

All the fundraising work had to take a back seat to school work, and there’s evidence that students didn’t miss a beat, Newell said.

“Our kids grew exponentially in their math and reading test scores, so the fundraising work didn’t take anything away from academics,” she said.

In fact, the effort taught them skills not included in the fifth-grade curriculum and life lessons that are not easy to teach.

“This is learning in action, as our teachers call it!” Hope wrote in her email to the Press.

Newell said she and Papamarcos had words of praise and encouragement for their students as they left their fifth-grade classrooms for the last time.

“We told them, ‘You are not a typical group of students,’” Newell said, adding, “The empathy these kids have is absolutely amazing.

“We also told them, ‘Don’t stop. Each year pick a new cause, because now you know exactly what to do.’”