Every year, the 8th-graders at Aaron Mossell Junior High School take a school trip to Washington D.C. and this year there’s a push to get every single student on one of those six buses.
But how to get them all on board took an idea from another part of the county that caught hold of the school’s imagination, inspiring a holiday campaign.
Jason Madden, assistant principal at Aaron Mossell Junior High, said he remembered holiday trees being sold at Niagara Wheatfield schools where his son competed in swimming.
“I loved that,” he said, adding that he’d take pictures every year and had even won trees from the auction.
The memory went into Madden’s toolbox of fundraising ideas and he brought it out, while working at Lockport High School for causes like the SPCA and other charitable organizations. In two years at LHS, the idea had taken hold and went from 20 trees to more than 62 trees being bought by hopeful bidders.
So when the administration at Aaron Mossell Junior High sat down, the idea came out naturally. Help the students who can’t come up with the cost of the trip and make the journey accessible to all, and do it all through an online auction of student-decorated trees.
“We want them to have these authentic experiences,” Madden said. “Not many kids will have the opportunity or the desire to go to D.C. but when we did this last year, kids loved it.”
Modeled after Harry Potter, the school already had different “teams” that got to work on each of their trees. Staff from different departments of the school also “stepped up,” said Madden and the result is a foyer filled with trees when the students come in each day.
“We put this together in a matter of five days,” Madden said. “By Friday I had 18 different groups of people saying they’d be willing to put a tree together and by Monday I passed out the trees and by Friday they were all decorated and were out there.”
Students talked about the trees, as well as their school pride. One of the favorite trees is the “Cash Tree” which is made up of clear plastic globes on the branches, each holding some bills for the eventual winner of the tree. There is also a Tim Hortons tree with gift cards, a Sabres tree with two sets of tickets, and the all-time favorite “The Grinch” tree.
According to Madden, bids for the trees have risen past the original goal of $1,000 and the bar is being raised to collect $2,000 for the entire drive.
From all accounts, the students enjoyed the campaign, as well as being at school. Mi’Joi Wright, a 7th-grader, said that from her experience, junior high school was actually “really good.”
“I love it here, actually,” she said. “At first I thought I was going to be a nobody … (but) everyone here is so welcoming and we have clubs here where you can be yourself and people let you be yourself.”
The drive ends on Friday at midnight. Interested bidders can go to https://forms.gle/EJYFxRoBLgwtyF2t8.