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My son came home last week saying that his PACE teahcer (PACE is Plano’s Gifted & Talented program) was requiring her student’s to do a community service project of some kind. He bounced a few ideas around and then decided he and his friend who lives across the street would clean up the trash out of the ponds behind our house.
We live in central Plano along a drainage ditch that has been landscaped to look like a series of beautiful ponds. We live near, but no on the ponds, which are maintained by the local homeowners. My son, his sister, and their friend headed off with garbage bags and a mission to pick up cans and clean up the ponds. They did this for several hours every day, collecting large bags of cans and trash, which he sorted and recycled. He did all of this on his own, without any prompting from us but lots of support and encouragement. We were very proud of him!
On Sunday, he came came home with an entire plan drawn out on paper to get teams of kids to come down and help them clean out the trash. Every time it rains, these ponds fill up with extra trash. But they are also home to a variety of fish, turtles, ducks and birds. Over the years, we have seen some amazing wildlife down there and some unusual birds. I am so proud of his enthusiasm, wilingness and innovation in figuring out how to accomplish this on a larger scale. He is 10 years old, by the way.
He did run into one snag with his plan. A lady who lives along the ponds kept shooing the kids away and telling them to go home. She would not let them explain what they were up to. When he showed us his idea of how to organize his troops for a mass cleanup, we had to explain that the property along the ponds is private and he would have to get permission from the homeowners association before he could arrive with large numbers of kids. It was difficult to explain this to him and still keep him enthusiastic. We did not want to say his plan was not a good one but that he needed to think it through more. It was a great learning opportunity.
I am hoping he will follow through with his plan and either talk to some of the local homeowners to get their support or shift his plan to clean up to our local park.
I guess my point here is how proud I am of him for his enthusiasm and his vision of how to do his project bigger and better. It can be a challenge to support our kids and give them freedom to follow through on their ideas. Our job is to keep them safe and guide them, help support their ideas and help them grow by learning to ask all of the right questions. This is a perfect example of one of the many joys and challenges of being a parent but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
PianoMan…
[...] Good piano performance. Thanks heaps for this!… if anyone else has anything it would be much appreciated. Great website http://www.en.Grand-Pianos.org Enjoy!…
Steve Noel Sr….
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