National Honor Society

From November 15th to December 13th, Student Council/NHS held a Fill a Room to Feed the Needy Food Drive. Kelly Crowther, Student Council vice-president and NHS member, planned the food drive as her 50-hour service project.  All classes and staff were urged to donate non-perishable food items. We created a competition among everyone. Below is a list of amounts each class/group donated:
 
 Mrs. Lytle-61
 Mrs. Gartrell-46
 Mrs. Forster-28
 Mrs. Reynolds-175
 Mrs. Thomson-64
 Mrs. Mortensen-114
 Mrs. Blinzinger-46
 Mrs. Larsen-64
 Mrs. Canty-80
 Junior Class-11
 Teachers and Staff-23
 
 Congratulations to Mrs. Reynolds’ 2nd graders. They won! We donated a total of 712 non-perishable food items to our local food bank. When Kelly delivered the food, the shelves were pretty bare. The volunteers were very grateful for the donations. She was told that by the end of the year, our local food bank hardly has any money left in their budget. Donations like ours are what fed many families around the Valley this holiday season! Awesome job 2nd graders and everyone who participated. What a way to ring in the Holiday season and acknowledge the true spirit of Christmas!

Our Student of the Week program is off a running again this semester. Students are nominated weekly and, if chosen, highlighted throughout the week. Students are nominated for various reasons. They may be excelling greatly, getting good grades, or they may just exhibit good manners/behavior. This is a great way to spotlight various Sanford students. Keep up the great work. Our Quote of the Week is also going well. Each week we have a different inspiring/motivational quote read in the daily announcements. Our hope is that all will feel inspired to do better or better themselves upon hearing the quote. ~ Whitney Blinzinger

This year, National Honor Society is going above and beyond to make Sanford even better than the best. Through our organization we hope to implement numerous fun and uplifting projects to our school’s environment.  Soon one who walks on campus will see banners to encourage school pride and self motivation and banners notifying and reminding students that Sanford is a bully-free zone. As NHS members, we hope to encourage students at Sanford to do their best in everything they participate in. We have established an “It’s Smart to Be Smart” campaign in order to help encourage students to work hard and improve in every subject. In doing this, we along with Sanford faculty members, have designed an improvement party program in which will allow students who have improved in their school work/behavior/participation will be rewarded at the end of each nine weeks with a one-to-two-hour enjoyable party/activity session. Also, to help everyone accomplish this goal, NHS members are offering tutoring for students who need that extra boost of help. Tutoring sessions will be offered every Tuesday and Thursday from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. in Mrs. Bond’s English classroom. To further award students who are continually working hard in class, we are choosing one student every week to spotlight and acknowledge his/her exceptional achievements. Also, we will have a weekly educational quote that will be announced every morning for students at Sanford to add to their gee-whiz collection. In conjunction with our “It’s Smart to Be Smart” campaign, we hope to implement more programs throughout the year to further encourage every student at Sanford to reach his/her full potential and gain as much knowledge as possible. NHS members are strongly committed to make Sanford a bully-free zone.  In order to do this, we have developed a campaign, “Raise Your Voice,” to create awareness and encourage everyone to be an up-stander, not a bystander against bullying. To achieve this goal, we have organized OLWEUS trainers to visit our school and offer an assembly for all Sanford students. Also, NHS members will receive training and will then further educate and demonstrate bullying issues one may experience  in a typical school setting. NHS members are continually working to help Sanford School become even better each and every day and are ecstatic to implement more educational/inspirational programs throughout our 2010-2011 school year.

Peanut Butter Drive

National Peanut Butter Day on Tuesday, March 1st, was a great success. We gathered 70 jars of peanut butter that will be donated to the San Luis Valley Food Bank in the name of Sanford Schools – YEAH! The following is a list of totals for each group:

Preschool- 10
Kindergarten – 14
1st grade – 1
2nd grade – 4
3rd grade – 9
4th grade – 15
5th grade – 4
6th grade – 1
7th grade – 2
11th grade – 4
12th grade – 4
Staff – 2

4th graders brought in the most jars; they will receive ice-cream sandwiches sometime next week. Also, everyone was able to enjoy peanut butter cookies in the afternoon. Thanks to everyone who participated, and way to go 4th graders!