February 4 Minutes

HEY, CHILD!

The first meeting of the Spring 2009 semester was held on February 4 at 5:30 pm. Britney opened the meeting with a discussion of the Smokey Mountain High School (SMHS) project. Though we are still trying to participate in this new and exciting program (see last minutes), Britney is having a hard time getting feedback from the administrators at SMHS. We will keep everyone updated as we acquire more information about the program.

Tiffany spoke about a great service opportunity that ALL CHILD members can be a part of! A first grade teacher at Fairview elementary needs some books put together for Fairview's Science Field Day. Everyone agreed that the books could be easily stitched in one meeting. Tiffany is in charge of getting the pages and the stitching materials - please come to the next meeting to help out! The teacher also said that Fairview will need volunteers for the Field Day, itself, but students from the methods classes will be largely invited to participate in that activity.

Maggie discussed a book sale that is very exciting for CHILD and for WCU. Maggie knows a nice woman in Morganton who sells children's books for HALF of the list price. She also sells damaged books that she has repaired for about $1 - $3 each. After much discussion, we decided that the best way to ensure a worthwhile trip to WCU for Maggie's contact is to rent a room in Maddison, the graduate dorm, and host a 2-day book show. The tentative dates for the show are March 19 and 20. We will need to get our guest a meal card and a temporary parking pass in addition to the room in Maddison. The book show will most likely be held in Killian 104 or in the Killian hallways. This is such an exciting opportunity - it is never too early to start a book collection for one's classroom or children!

Morgan, our resident artist, will bring in a tee-shirt design at our next meeting. She described two designs, and most members prefered a tee with CHILD on the front, upper left corner, and an inspirational quote with the word "CHILD" on the back. We hope to purchase the shirts from Simply T's - Morgan is now in charge of the tee-shirt project.

Britney also had dishartening news about the website. We still cannot use it, and our website man has all but disappeared! Maggie volunteered to try to fix the problems so that we can use the website for CHILD purposes. Yay, Maggie!

The meeting closed with a discussion of meeting times for the remainder of the semester. We plan to alternate Mondays and Wednesdays so that more people can stay involved. Our next meeting will be on Monday, February 16 at 5:15 p.m.

Have a happy semester, and I'll see you all soon!

April