Getting up at 6 a.m. isn’t easy for a middle school student. But when it occurs ON A SATURDAY and DURING CHRISTMAS BREAK … well … it must be pretty important (and may require an extra loud alarm).
For seven Forsythe Middle School students, getting up this morning before the sun meant an opportunity to serve breakfast to the less fortunate with Anna’s Kindness. No loud alarm clock needed.
The students — along with Forsythe teacher Semra Koknar —arrived at St Andrews Episcopal Church in downtown Ann Arbor at 7 a.m. and were immediately assigned tasks by Linda and Mark, breakfast coordinators for the morning.
Forsythe seventh grader Ryan Thomas-Palmer scooped out the grits and oatmeal, sixth graders Heather Hale and Rylan Kahle handed out dessert, Deon Wilson filled and served the juice, and Autumn Gorman poured coffee to over 100 guests at St. Andrew’s Church on a Saturday morning where temperatures hovered at 0.
Meanwhile, Forsythe seventh grader Sam Procoppe and sixth grader Bailey Edison helped prep the cereal table and then ‘enjoyed’ (that’s right, enjoyed) doing dishes thanks to the “very cool” Hobart commercial dishwashing machine.
All the students not only liked their assignments — Heather could’t wait to wipe down the tables afterward — but they may have enjoyed their interaction with the breakfast guests the most.
“It was great talking to them and saying hi,” said Autumn, as she was handing guests cups of coffee from the kitchen doorway (Autumn was one of the first Forsythe students Anna met when she moved to Ann Arbor; both girls lived within a few houses of each other and boarded the bus at the same stop).
Sam and Bailey talked about Marvel and Star Wars with some of those lined up for breakfast. One breakfast guest shared stories about his cat and other tales with Ryan throughout the breakfast, as she stood with the porridge pot.
For those students who were serving the homeless for the first time, they were surprised by the same thing.
“I thought they might be kinda angry because they were homeless and here we are kids with homes and things, but they were very nice,” said Ryan.
Heather agreed: “Yeah, they were so nice.”
Well worth the early-morning wake-up call.
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