Students gather pennies for victims

By Kathy Slobogin
CNN

(CNN) -- Like many schools across the country this week, Brown St. Academy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was trying to help its students make sense of the unthinkable. Teachers tried to temper some of the more alarming images on television, answered questions about rescue workers buried in rubble, and reassured children that their school was safe.

But for the fifth graders at Brown St. Academy, that wasn't enough. They had something bigger in mind.

"I had two fifth graders come to my office," said Principal Linda Robinson. "They knocked on my door and said, 'Mrs. Robinson, we would like to talk to you. We're hearing about this and we're sitting here and we're doing nothing. There's something we can do.'"

VIDEO CNN's Kathy Slobogin reports on the fund-raising efforts of schoolchildren in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (September 14) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

The fifth graders told their principal they wanted to start a penny drive for the victims of the plane crashes.

Robinson says 90 percent of her students come from low-income families. But that didn't phase them.

"They said to me, 'Mrs. Robinson, every person at least has pennies. We can at least give pennies.'"

Led by the fifth graders, the entire school mobilized to bring in pennies and clothes for the victims. The students also asked that the school bring in the Salvation Army to help them distribute what they collect.

Robinson says the drive has helped turn a tragic event into a source of pride for the children. She says children arrived on school buses in the morning clutching their pennies.

"I saw students getting off, and they had their hands up, and they were saying, 'We made a difference!'" Robinson says.

She says children are talking about the news and current events in the hallways and on the playground. She has also been impressed by the children's ability to comfort each other. Two members of the teaching staff have friends that were lost in the crashes, or have not been heard from.

It was the students who reached out to those teachers, hugging them and praying for them, rather than the other way around, Robinson says.

"They are thinking, and they are reacting positively to this tragedy."

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