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Students learn a skill, help those in need
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6th graders Brett Rodgers (12) and Alexis Ramsey (12) help make blankets along with 8th grader Kristin Boyd (14) for an after school program at their school, W.S. Guy Middle in Liberty
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Kristin Boyd (14) Brett Rodgers (12) and Alexis Ramsey (12) look at the different knitted stitch squares made by everyone whose participating in the afterschool program at W.S. Guy Middle School in Liberty.
Participating in the class is an option for students in the middle school.
When the halls are cleared, books closed and most classrooms empty Tuesday evenings at W.S. Guy Middle School in Liberty, one of Ellen King’s classes is just getting under way.
King, an eighth-grade teacher who also organizes community projects for the sixth-through- eighth grades, takes a seat at one of the eight workstations in her classroom and waits. Within minutes the class is filled with students eager to learn knitting and crocheting — plus make a few blankets and pillows for the homeless and elderly.
King has been making blankets and pillows with students for several years. The knitting and crocheting are new additions, but King says it serves the same purpose: showing young people the good feeling that can come from working hard to make something for someone in greater need than themselves.
“This is a community service, and I truly believe children should have a sense of the needs of others instead of just what they want themselves. This is a giving of themselves,” she said.
None of the students in the after-school knitting class are ordered to attend, they all volunteer to come. Each class usually contains about two dozen students on a continual basis.
“It’s on a first-come, first-served basis, and we are usually pretty full,” she said. “It’s kind of like our little class to stay after school, and we can just knit and talk.”
The after-school classes are not exclusively female, either. King said there are usually more males than females participating in the sixth- and seventh-grade blanket- and pillow-making classes. The boys, however, drop off drastically in the eighth-grade knitting sessions.
Brett Rodgers, sixth-grade student, said he started attending the classes because he heard about past classes and thought it would be fun to make things that would ultimately benefit other people. He is leaving the district, but said he would have defied the norm and stayed in the classes through the eighth grade.
King described knitting and crocheting as a “lost art” for young people because not many take part in the activity anymore. She is hopeful, however, that after-school activities bring back a desire in some young people to continue being creative through knitting and crocheting.
“This can give them something to do in the evening,” she said. “It’s a lifelong hobby.”
Kristin Boyd, an eighth-grader, picked up her first crochet hook in January and has no plans to permanently put the tool down.
“I like this. I like it a lot,” she said. “It definitely takes a lot of focus and attention, but as you keep going you get faster and see it forming, and it’s really fun.”
Alexis Ramsey, a sixth-grader, has a great-grandmother in a local nursing home. She is determined to provide her grandmother and all those close to her in the nursing facility with blankets made in the class. She has taken eight to the facility and has only a few more to meet her goal.
King said materials for the class are purchased through donations from the parent-teacher association and local businesses, but are beginning to run out. She is hoping to find some grant money to keep the program going.
King recalls all the items made and donated to a list of charitable organizations and says the after-school program is just too good for the students and the community to be ended.
jgoodwin@vindy.com