Student organization helps first-year teacher

For Melanie Steele, a second-grade teacher at Rocky Hill Elementary School, Christmas will be extra special this year, thanks to a group of students at Pellissippi State.

The Pellissippi State students—all future teachers themselves—decided to share their Christmas spirit by helping out a first-year public school teacher with the purchase of needed and desired classroom supplies.

“Teachers are given very little money to purchase supplies for their class,” said Carla Ellis, treasurer of the Student Tennessee Education Association (STEA), a professional organization for pre-service teachers and the sponsor of this project.

“Teachers end up spending a lot of their own money to purchase the materials they need to teach effectively. All of us in STEA are going to be teachers ourselves one day, so we decided to ‘adopt’ a first-year teacher and help her out with her classroom needs.”

The students have spent $500, obtained from the College’s fee board, to purchase items from Steele’s “wish list,” including books from the Magic School Bus series, books on tape, craft supplies, a paper cutter and a filing cabinet. STEA members will present Steele with her gifts on December 17 at 1:15 p.m. in her Rocky Hill classroom.

"Inside Pellissippi" is a bi-monthly electronic publication produced by the Community Relations Office for the faculty and staff of Pellissippi State Technical Community College, 10915 Hardin Valley Road, P.O. Box 22990, Knoxville, Tennessee 37933-0990. All suggestions and comments should be sent to Julia Wood (jwood@pstcc.edu).

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