Greene Street Students Walk for a Cause

On Friday, October 14, all 264 Greene Street Friends School students in grades Pre-Kindergarten through 8 "walked for a cause." Led by school counselor Melody Regino and science teacher Kelly Breen, each grade chose a cause that has special meaning to them. The children and their teachers spent time in class learning about their cause, and at a school assembly made presentations to each other. They also created a "ribbon for a cause" to show what they had learned. Finally, in conjunction with the Partners Program, pairs of students across grades partnered with each other, older students leading younger students, on the ten lap walk on campus.

Since the 1980s, Greene Street Friends School students have taken part in a mini-AIDS walk, a tradition begun by former Greene Street teachers Kia-Dawn Davenport and Jane Ries-Jacoby to educate our community about HIV and AIDS, and unify our community around a cause. This year Melody and Kelly, along with the faculty, decided to expand the event to include other causes that we feel are impacting our community, our state, or our world.

The causes represented this year are:

Children at St. Christopher’s Hospital (Pre-Kindergarten)

Victims of the Tsunami (Kindergarten)

Literacy (1^{st grade)}

World Hunger (2nd grade)

Endangered Animals (3rd grade)

Leukemia (4th grade)

Heart Disease (5th grade)

Diabetes (6th grade)

Lung Cancer (7th grade)

AIDS (8th grade)

On choosing to walk on behalf of endangered animals, 3rd grader Khalil commented, "We really like animals. The world wouldn’t be normal without animals." His classmates agree. Fellow 3rd grader Sara said, "There are a lot of endangered animals, like sea turtles." And Anaya chimed in, "There were 9 species of tigers and now 3 of them are extinct. We need to do something."