Darien school donates thousands of food items to food bank

One kindergarten teacher has found a way to transform an elementary school tradition into a charitable event.

Jennifer Trifiatis has been a kindergarten teacher at Ox Ridge Elementary for the past six years, but incorporating charitable events into the classroom has been something she has been doing since before she came into the district. This year, Trifiatis saw an opportunity to have her annual food drive coincide with the celebration of being in school for 100 days.

"When I first started this six years ago, it was only in kindergarten, but now we have four second grades, four fourth grades, and three fifth grades participating in the food drive," Trifiatis said. "Each year I was doing this, I kept telling the drivers who picked up the food that I would get more people, and so far I have been able to."

Organizing a food drive with young students isn't an easy task as Trifatis ran into a few problems that most people probably wouldn't have considered.

"Each classroom donates about 100 items and we ask that each student bring in four or five items," she said. "However, we did run into some problems where the Lower Fairfield Food Bank would want peanut butter, but we have children who have allergies to peanuts, so we can't bring that in. Now it's easier because the food bank gives me a huge list of items and we pick out the items we want to bring."

One of the other challenges Trifiatis has had to deal with is the number of items each student, especially the ones in kindergarten, can reasonably handle.

"You can't ask kindergartners to bring in four or five juice containers because those are fairly large and they can't carry them all at once. That wasn't something I thought about when I first started doing this," Trifiatis said.

However, despite a few unexpected challenges, the food drive has been a pleasant experience for Trifiatis and the participating classes. The food drive also presents the opportunity for some real world math as students in her class were asked to find the best solution for counting all of the items they collected.

"This year I had them come up with ways to count all the items and they decided to count them in groups of 10," Trifiatis said. "We ended up with 104 items this year."

Besides benefiting the food bank, Trifiatis said students understand that there are families who need food assistance.

"There was one teacher who described this event so well. He said this event makes the children realize how when they bring in five items, it may not seem like much, but when they put it all together there's so much more," Trifiatis said. "It also makes them realize how they can help other people."

For the students, giving to those in need is a worthwhile endeavor, but what they really enjoy is counting all of the items they collect.

"I know it may sound lame, but they really do like counting everything," Trifiatis said. In terms of future plans for the food drive, Trifiatis said she will continue to organize it at Ox Ridge and may consider trying to expand into the other schools as well.

"I haven't really discussed anything with the other school, but I will definitely continue to do it here," she said. "The thing is that everybody gives food during Thanksgiving and Christmas, but they forget about the rest of the time of the year."