Teacher raises enough money to buy Easter baskets for 3 5th-grade classes
Some fifth-graders in Tampa, Florida got an Easter surprise recently that they won't soon forget.
Last week, before the holiday weekend, Sheehy Elementary School teacher Brent Walker was out shopping for school supplies when he took to Facebook with an idea: He asked whether 20 friends would be interested in donating $10 apiece so that he could buy premade Easter baskets for his 20 students.
"Would anyone like to sponsor a student? I don't know how many of them will get an Easter basket this year, but I know it would make their day!" he said, in part, in the post.
Within an hour of his posting, Walker had raised more than $700. He then decided to buy and hand out Easter baskets to all three classes of fifth-graders at his school. The baskets were delivered Thursday.
"I was like, 'Wow!'" student Rai'seania Simmons told ABC affiliate WFTS-TV. "That was surprising."
Rai'seania said her Easter basket had contained art supplies, which she appreciated because she loves to paint.
The night before the delivery, Walker posted a video outside of a local Walmart, showing five store carts filled with premade baskets and thanking everyone who'd donated as well as Walmart, which had given him a discount.
"I'm probably going to start crying here in just a minute," he said in the Facebook post. "This is just unbelievable."
Walker said the extra money from the donations would be used by all three fifth-grade teachers for incentives, prizes and parties for the students.
"This has been an amazing thing to see," he told WFTS.
Rai'seania said she’d never received an Easter basket from a teacher before Thursday.
"He deserves a thank you," she said of Walker, who teaches math and reading. "He's really a good teacher. He's a generous teacher. ... [And,] he expects the best from us."
