Caring comes in small packages

Deirdre Newman

The spirit of caring suffused Candice Richards’ classroom at

TeWinkle Middle School on Wednesday.

About 60 seventh-grade math students crowded into Room 39 to watch

a teary-eyed Richards present gifts they had bought to a

representative of Olive Crest, a Santa-Ana based agency that provides

homes and services for abused children and families.

The students bought the gifts for the school’s Character Education

program, which focused on caring in December. Richards said she was

impressed by the enthusiastic effort her students put into the

project.

“I can’t say enough about what these kids have done, because some

of them have very little and still gave,” Richards said.

To emphasize the different facets of caring, in early December,

Richards involved her students in putting together a “caring quilt,”

for which they drew four illustrations of things they cared about.

Then she gave them a caring quiz.

With Christmas around the corner, Richards went online to find a

charitable project for her students to participate in. She found the

Kids Care Club and asked for a local foster care agency. Once Olive

Crest was identified, Richards’ students had one week to collect

their gifts. And they did so with gusto, filling about 80 shoeboxes

with presents.

Tannisha Duncan, 12, decided to buy gifts for a 2-year-old baby

girl -- a stuffed zebra, socks, crayons and pajamas.

“I saw all these homeless and abused kids at my brothers’ church

and saw a video of me opening up presents, so it means a lot to me

that these kids will have presents to open up,” Tannisha said.

Amanda Hughes, Olive Crest’s community involvement assistant said

she was touched by the generosity of Richards’ students.

“It’s a little overwhelming,” Hughes said. “We definitely have

some [other] schools doing this, but this is the biggest I’ve seen.”

Richards was visibly moved by the outpouring of caring from her

students and broke into tears during the presentation. Afterward, she

revealed that she had been a foster child herself.

“I was a foster child until I was 14 -- in and out of foster

homes, you name it, I was there,” Richards said. “That’s why it’s

really dear to me. I know what it felt like [to be a foster child] on

Christmas.”

Richards said she would like to continue caring projects in her

classroom and might even try to form a Kids Care Club on campus next

year.

* DEIRDRE NEWMAN covers education. She may be reached at (949)

574-4221 or by e-mail at deirdre.newman@latimes.com.