Christ Presbyterian Academy Middle School
ACSI Region: Southeast
Location of School: Nashville, TN
Program Objective: to give students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades the opportunity to adopt a classroom, earn money, and purchase items on a wish list provided by the adopted classroom’s teacher, thereby allowing the students to share the blessings of their own lives and develop a heart for reaching out to the community
Summary of Program
In the midst of an “all about me” culture, even Christian students have to be shaken out of a complacency that blinds them to the needs of others in the world. At Christ Presbyterian Academy (CPA), one middle school parent, who has heard the call to feed God’s sheep, has been instrumental in bringing CPA’s middle schoolers face-to-face with a world outside their own. Her efforts have resulted in one of the most anticipated annual events in CPA’s middle school.
Through her work with Salama Ministry, which helps inner-city children, Alice Weber walks daily in the world of her ministry children. Some of the Salama Ministry workers are teachers she befriends. As a result, Alice sees firsthand the resource needs they have in schools with little money for anything beyond textbooks. Several years ago, Alice decided that Christ Presbyterian Academy’s middle school, where at the time her own children were students, could help these teachers make their classrooms more desirable learning environments. She began to interview teachers from Carter Lawrence Elementary, the school attended by most of the Salama Ministry children. Alice compiled a list of needed resources and then approached CPA’s middle school principal, Rhonda Smith, to ask for help. Beginning with that meeting, Operation Love-a-Classroom (OLAC) formed.
OLAC recipients are chosen by application through Salama Ministry. When teachers are chosen, they submit a detailed list of resources needed for their classroom. Each of CPA’s 12 middle school advisories partners with a Carter Lawrence classroom. Alice provides the advisories with a photograph of the class along with the wish list. With complete faith that God will provide, Alice purchases each item and sets up an OLAC “store.” Students sign up to buy the requested items from the OLAC store and then decide ways to earn the needed money. One of the major learning experiences for CPA’s students results from the request that they not ask parents for the money but that they earn it themselves. Every student volunteers to help provide something from the wish list.
For three days in November, student government representatives “sell” the store items during lunch. Each advisory makes it a goal for the students to purchase all their items the first day, and they usually do! Alice delivers dozens of boxes of resources to Carter Lawrence, where teachers and students alike are usually overwhelmed by the response. Soon after the deliveries are made, CPA students receive a photograph of the Carter Lawrence students that shows the new books and supplies. Everyone is blessed by the event. Carter Lawrence teachers and students receive much-needed resources as they see the love and concern of students from another school.
Most of all, CPA’s middle schoolers experience the joy and blessing of being God’s vessels. Their enthusiasm is contagious; their desire to help is inspiring. And most of all, their understanding that “it’s not about me” results in lives yielded to the love of God and His purpose of drawing others to Himself. From its first trial run, OLAC was a success with CPA families. Now, each year we are eager to receive the folders of photographs and wish lists. And we feel honored that we can be a small part of bringing joy to the precious students of Carter Lawrence Elementary School.
Operation Love-a-Classroom 7.4