Copper War

A lovely young lady, Hannah Olheiser came to me one day in my classroom requesting me to be the sponsor in her desire to raise money for The Make a Wish Foundation. She told me a touching story of her inspiration and how could I possibly say no?

The first thing we did was sponsor a Copper War at our school. We put all the 4th period classes on 10 different teams. I was the captain of the purple team. You put pennies in your own team jars and them silver coins and dollars in other people's jars. Pennies are positive points and all other money are negative points. Your quest is to stay in the positive. Of course I bragged all over school that my team would win. I even wrote a "beautiful" song about how the purple team would be victorious and sang it on the video announcements. Of course, if you tell teenagers that you will win, they will do everything in their power to make you lose. It was AMAZING to watch the students and teachers be so generous and competitive. Just when you think teens are selfish and too self-absorbed to serve or give to others, they surprise you. What a great experience. As could be expected my team ended up losing (we were something like negative 12,000 points - even after bringing in 150 bucks in pennies), BUT we raised the most money. All in all we ended up raising almost $1300 to help grant some wonderful child dealing with a horrible illness their wish. I wish I had taken more pictures, but here are a few of the kids that volunteered to come in a count all that money.