For many years, Gilbert El had an actual post office as part of the US Postal Service, Tiger Town Post Office (Tiger Town, AZ). It was a program that they did for schools. Patty Montgomery and her primary multi-age class ran the post office. Every classroom had a mailbox and mail was delivered daily. Students in her class served as postmaster, mail carrier, etc.
She started it because one of her parents works for USPS, Nancy Hamlett. They worked very hard to get this set up. We had a contest for the students to name the different sidewalks and walkways throughout the school. An Eagle Scout's project was to paint the names on the sidewalks. Some of the names were Tiger Pride Pkwy, Tiger Champs Camp, Black and Gold Gtwy, El Gato Lane, Tigertail Crk, and Whisker's Way. The students learned to address envelopes correctly. Parents and grandparents would send cards and letters to Tiger Town and they were delivered to the classroom. Letters came from all over.
A couple of years Patty actually had the Pony Express come to Gilbert El. They would take letters from Gilbert to northern Arizona just before Gilbert Days in November and so they came with their horses and picked up our mail. I remember all of the students being on the playground to see the horses and riders!
Every Wednesday they had a penny drive to raise money for different projects. One year they raised over $1000 for the Child Crisis Nursery. Each classroom and the office had jars for people to put a penny in and then the post office students would pick up the money on Wednesdays.
For several years we had a live news cast every morning. Tom Waechter, one of our teachers, was in charge of this. He had an actual "studio" and two students were the anchors. They made announcements about what was happening on the campus and students could go on to tell about a project or get recognition for something. It was great!!
As you can tell from all the posts, I was very fortunate to work with such an incredible group of adults who ALWAYS went above and beyond for the students!!
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