In 2014, alumnus Adam Ward received recognition from CBC’s Future 40 for the Giftstone Project, a project that delivers Christmas gifts to every student at his school.
Adam Ward is a Grade 8 teacher at Sacred Heart Community School in Regina, SK. Ward moved to Regina in Grade 5, and remembers that “Grades 5 and 6 were the worst of my educational life.” Things turned around for him when in Grades 7 and 8 his teacher, Leona Cote, took the time to get to know him. “She encouraged me and made me feel like I mattered,” says Ward, and “that is where the journey to becoming a teacher began.” While a student at the University of Regina, he took a job as a teacher associate, and found he really enjoyed working with students. He got a degree in Religious Studies and then followed it up with a Bachelor of Education After Degree (BEAD).
Ward’s teaching philosophy is that “there are many ways to help students succeed but to be a good teacher you have to be determined enough to overcome all of the challenges that prevent students from being successful.”
Ward’s commitment to knowing and caring for students and his determination to overcome challenges that prevent student success are behind the Giftstone Project that he developed. With the Giftstone Project, students from Grades 4 to 8 write a letter to Santa, and Ward, through his network of family, friends, and colleagues, raises the funds to purchase Christmas gifts for the students through donations.
Interview with Adam Ward
How did the Giftstone Project come to be?
In my first year teaching at Sacred Heart, I gave the students a behaviour contract sheet. The last question on the sheet was: “What will it take for me to have a good year?” A Grade 6 boy responded that he hoped “Santa Claus wouldn’t forget the Grade 6’s.” I asked him what he meant by this and he told me that all of the younger students in school received a gift at Christmas but the Grade 6’s didn’t get one, which meant he wouldn’t get any gift for Christmas. So money was raised and gifts were bought for the Grade 6’s. What I didn’t know at the time was that the K-3 students received gifts through the Sasktel Angels, but none of the Grades 4-8 students received a gift. So that first year all of the K-3s, along with the Grade 6s got gifts, but none of the Grades 4, 5, 7 or 8 students received gifts. So the next year, I talked to our Principal, Starla Gerbenski, and asked if we could provide gifts for the whole school if we could raise enough money, and she said “yes,” and Giftstone started there.
Once the idea was conceived, how did you make it happen?
The first year for fundraising my mom sent emails to all of her contacts asking if they would donate money with a goal of $900. We ended up with over $1,300 through individual donations. The following year, Westjet’s Regina employees wanted to do something for the school at Christmas so they had a number of fundraising activities that raised over 1/3 of what was required to ensure we could purchase gifts for everyone. The rest of the money was through individual donations through a number of people emailing information to everyone in their contact lists.
To make the gifts happen, every student writes a letter to Santa Claus asking for two or three things they really want for Christmas. Lists are made from the letters and then the shopping gets done. The weekend before the gifts are given there is a wrapping day where a number of people, mostly from the school division, come and wrap the presents. Then, on “Giftstone Day” the students gather in the gym for a Christmas movie, hot chocolate, and candy canes. After the movie the gifts are brought in, (originally a big surprise but now that it’s happened ten times not quite as much, though the excitement hasn’t dropped at all), and the kids open their gifts together. All of the gifts include everything needed to operate, specifically batteries when required.
What is the significance of this project for the students?
What the students get, that they hopefully hold on to for many years to come, is the excitement and joy of opening gifts with friends, the feeling that there are many people in the world that care about them enough to buy them a gift that they really want at Christmas, and an experience at school that they will remember their whole lives and, most importantly, a memory they will recall when they are parents so that school is a place they want their kids to be.
There are countless heartwarming stories but one stands out above the rest. One year a Grade 6 student asked for, and received, a Hot Wheels set. When he returned to his class his teacher asked if that was what he really wanted as it seemed like a kind of young gift for him. He replied that his brother really wanted a Hot Wheels set and now he could give him one for Christmas. His teacher then asked what he wanted for Christmas and he told her a football, so she went out and bought him one.
The Reading Program
As much as Ward loves and enjoys the Giftstone Project, his contribution to Sacred Heart students’ accomplishments in reading is the thing he is most proud to be a part of at Sacred Heart Community School. Students participate in an Accelerated Reader (AR) program, in which students receive points for reading at their highest reading level. Bookmarks are awarded to students as they make their way to 100 points, at 10, 25, and 50 points. At 50 points, students also receive a Golden Apple award. At Sacred Heart Community School, teachers are also encouraged to participate in AR.
What is your contribution to the reading program? (The story behind the yellow t-shirt Ward is wearing in the photos.)
After I achieved 50 points in AR for the second consecutive year, I was bragging about it to one of my good friends on staff, Simon Firnesz. At the next meeting, Simon decided to poke fun at me and said “We can’t all be like the Golden Boy. [referring to the Golden Apple award]‘”
I decided to play along [with the Golden Boy idea], and at the assembly where I was receiving my Golden Apple award wore a paper crown, played regal music, and had two of my Grade 8 students throw confetti around me as I moved to the front to receive my award. I wore sunglasses, called myself Golden Boy: King of Reading, and made a big deal of the whole thing. Later in the year Simon was making a school video and wanted to have a Golden Boy appearance in the video. In the video, Golden Boy announced his three “Golden G’s” of reading which were “Get a Book, Get That Book Read, and Get That Test Done.” We thought this was both stupid and hilarious, an inside joke between the two of us, but after the video was shown, a Grade 2 teacher said that in class one day a student announced that she had completed all her work and asked what to do. Another student in the class shouted out “Get a Book, Get That Book Read, and Get That Test Done!”
After that, Golden Boy started making regular appearances at school assemblies. As AR caught on, Starla said it would be awesome if we could get 100 students to 100 points. So I had a t-shirt made up for September 2009 to add to the Golden Boy costume, (along with the paper crown, a golden cape and some golden “bling”) and Golden Boy introduced “Mission 2G” to the assembly. Misson 2G was to GET 100 students to GET 100 points. After that assembly, Starla asked me about the t-shirt and then said she wanted 100 point t-shirts for all of the students who earned 100 points. The shirts were, and are, a major piece of the school culture. After two years of black t-shirts with the school logo, we decided to incorporate Aboriginal culture into the t-shirts along with the 100 point slogan “100 is Forever.” In the third year of the t-shirt awards, we changed the colour to yellow, one of our school colours and also the colour of the sun, which is the highest point in the First Nations worldview. We put an eagle feather on the front in a circle, the circle a sign of infinity and the eagle feather a traditional award given out in First Nations culture as a sign of great accomplishment. The yellow colour is also significant because it is not a gang colour, and now defines the reading culture of our school. This is the fourth year of the yellow shirts, in the second year we had buffalo on the front because “Education is the new buffalo” for the First Nations people. Last year we put an Inukshuk on the shirts as guides and to recognize the Inuit people. This year we have the Métis infinity symbol on the shirt.
Ward is happy in his career as a teacher, and does not plan to make any changes to his career at this time. What he enjoys about his profession is “seeing student be happy/excited/feel good about themselves when they are successful.” In response to the CBC Future 40 Winners Circle recognition, Ward says, “A teacher’s success is determined solely by student success. Recognition is always nice but being a part of the CBC Future 40 is rewarding because it is a reflection of what Sacred Heart’s students are doing.”