Gillispie School Donates Blood and Money

Gillispie School in La Jolla teaches its kids "individual commitment to the larger world," according to 3^rd grade teacher Erica Hurley.  The pre-K through 6^th grade school chose holding a blood drive to teach their students exactly how that kind of commitment can play out.  This year and last, Gillispie held blood drives as one of their "service learning" projects.

Hurley – a 20 year blood donor – took the lead in setting up the drive, but all students participated in some way.  Hurley says in addition to helping the "larger world" their own small world offered an up close and personal example of why giving blood is so important.  One of the students at Gillisipie had a leukemia relapse in 2010, and Hurley say she "organized a blood drive out of desperation."  She continues "by some miracle [that student] is alive today."

You could say Hurley and her school's handling of the blood drive – from planning, through execution, even adding an "extra credit" project, was textbook perfect.

They advertised the drive in their on-line newsletter, put flyers around La Jolla, had Girl Scouts pass out flyers with their cookie deliveries, advertised at the farmer's market…. the list goes on.

 Parents and teachers donated blood the day of the drive, but so did some in the school's neighborhood. Hurley says "it was great to have the community come to our school!  Most had never been inside before."

Hurley created a volunteer sign up sheet for faculty and parents to help her organize the drive. To involve the kids she came up with the idea of holding a bake sale the same day as the drive and the kids volunteered in shifts all day long to man the bake sale tables.  Parents of her students baked cakes, and all sorts of desserts. Hurley says "it was the best bake sale ever!"  They held it right outside the gym doors where the drive was going on.  "Nothing was priced, which ended up making us more money.  People were donating $50 for a cake.  We even got a few $100's!"   

In all Gillispie School ended up not only teaching their students about giving to their community, but gave  72 units of blood to the community, signed up 30 people to the bone marrow registry and presented a check for $1400 to the blood bank's foundation !

Faculty & students helping their community with the San Diego Blood Bank.