Elks visit Jackson County classrooms

Our Lodge gave out 631 English dictionaries, one for every 3rd grade student in Jackson County, in September 2008. We also gave out 24 Spanish-to-English dictionaries for the Spanish-speaking students whose teachers felt needed they additional help as they learned English. We found in the past that the teachers liked to use the dictionaries to formulate some teaching plans for their classes, so we gave out 31 English and 4 Spanish dictionaries to the 3rd grade teachers of Jackson County.

We did receive letters from each child from two classrooms this year. The notes from the kids were precious. The kids were all excited about receiving their own personal dictionary. One teacher couldn’t believe we were donating dictionaries each year, and she at first tried to keep the dictionaries so her new class of students would have them.

We made our own labels identifying our Lodge as the donor of the dictionaries and fastened them in the front of each dictionary. We felt this provided good publicity for our Lodge, showing we were being of service to our communities.

I can’t think of any other project that fulfills such an everlasting need for our youth.