Reporting by Rebecca Loroff, Appleton Post-Crescent / Appleton Post-Crescent
In the first weeks of school after a July 27 tornado, Menasha High School social studies teacher Ginger Schade said she’s focused on giving her students as much of a normal high school experience as possible.
Still, even as she’s in the midst of teaching U.S. History and World Cultures, she wants to help her students, too: “I know the feeling of wanting to do something and not knowing what that is,” she said.
While Nathan Calder Stadium is still being fixed, the school is gearing up for homecoming on Oct. 16 and 17. Schade said parent Gina Lingnofski approached the school with an idea: hold a donation drive for dress clothes to give away ahead of Menasha’s homecoming dance.
Schade and another teacher, Erika Gearhart, oversee prom and homecoming, so they took the lead on starting the drive. When they announced it to the public, Schade said, the floodgates opened. “We got a huge response,” she said.
Since the drive began Sept. 8, donations have filled a homeroom on the third floor at Menasha High School: short dresses, long gowns, button-up shirts, ties, jewelry and dress shoes in bags, racks and piles on tables. Student council members have been visiting the room daily to sort through the piles, Schade said. She doesn’t have an exact count of everything that’s brought in, but she estimates over a hundred dresses alone. They’ve even set aside several racks of more formal wear for prom.
Schade is grateful to the community for showing up to help. She believes having something to wear to homecoming will mean a lot to students whose families face financial difficulties after the storm.
“It seems like something small,” she said, “but that’s not fair for them to miss out on this milestone.”
The school is collecting clothes at the Menasha High School office until Sept. 22, and the group will spend the rest of the week organizing the donations, Schade said. Menasha High School students will be able to pick out their outfits Sept. 26.
Rebecca Loroff is a K-12 education reporter for the USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. She welcomes story tips and feedback. Contact her at rloroff@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Appleton Post-Crescent: Menasha homecoming drive brings ‘huge response’, a hundred dresses
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