Gravenhurst High School (GHS) students have a reason to be proud of themselves.
They created over 1,500 ceramic poppies, which were sold for $5 at participating businesses in Bracebridge, Huntsville, Gravenhurst, and Bala. Visual arts and ceramics teacher at GHS Aimée Bulloch-Moore says they raised $8,800, all of which will be split between the Royal Canadian Legions in Bracebridge, Huntsville, Gravenhurst, and Bala. That means each legion will get a cheque worth $2,212.
This is the third year students at GHS have done this. Last year, about $4,000 was raised.
“They all had a huge round of applause, they were all so excited,” Bulloch-Moore says, who adds she told her class just minutes before speaking with the MyMuskokaNow.com newsroom.
“Nothing is more relieving for me and them to hear that this has been a success after all the hard work they put into this,” she says.
That hard work included working through a power outage when she says the nearly 400 students at GHS banded together to make sure they would be able to fulfill orders. Bulloch-Moore says the kids have absolutely amazed her with their efforts.
While it was fun for all, she says it turned out to be run kind of like a car assembly line. “If the Ford assembly line was made up of tinier people and had people with smaller, quicker moving hands,” Bulloch-Moore jokes. “It was like having a full-time job on top of a full-time job.”
Next year will be the fourth for the project. Bulloch-Moore hopes to see even more people get involved, hinting at the possibility of involving other schools with the Trillium Lakes District School Board.
Bulloch-Moore says throughout the project, she took the opportunity to teach students about the significance of the poppy. Along the way, she adds students learned about honour, respect, and a little bit about the sacrifices soldiers made during the war.