Meeting Time At Zoo

By COURTNEY CAIRNS PASTOR, The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 19, 2007

TAMPA - For years, Hillel School students took the leadership role with foster children and preschoolers from struggling families at 78th Street Station.

They organized fundraisers and bought books for the Palm River day care. They donated toys, clothes and food. They took field trips and read and played with the children.

But at Lowry Park Zoo recently, the 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds took charge. They grabbed their Hillel partners and tugged them to anything that snagged their attention. The chimpanzees. The petting zoo goats. The pony rides. The koi pool. The slides.

The Hillel students ran alongside, pausing only to wash little hands and make sure the children stayed with the group.

'Where do you want to go? Where?' seventh-grader Leah Wasserman said, laughing as a little boy pulled her across an Australian-themed courtyard to a tank of fat koi.

Jordon Jones, 5, had discovered so many options on his first trip to the zoo that he couldn't decide what he wanted to do more. He sat on Max Osnos' lap and swung his legs as he told him he was ready to take another pony ride.

Then he turned and spotted a play area.

'I want to go over there,' he told Max. 'I want to go on the slide.'

The relationship between the two schools - one a private Jewish school on Fletcher Avenue, the other an east Hillsborough day care center the Child Abuse Council runs - has grown each year. Fundraisers Hillel eighth-graders started years ago have expanded to include seventh- and third-graders and now involve food drives and clothing, toy and book donations.

The older and younger children also get time to hang out together. Hillel students have supplied snacks and drinks for a field day at the park and visited classrooms with books to read to children. The zoo trip gave them another chance to get to know one another better.

Chevon Nunn, who teaches 3-year-olds at 78th Street Station, said the activities give the children quality time with older students. Some of the preschool children come from foster homes, she said, and others have unstable or unconventional family situations.

At Hillel, third-grade teacher Shelley Herzog has enjoyed watching her class mature through community service.

'I see them realizing that they're really going to make an impact on their lives,' Herzog said.

The third-grade class raised more than $500 to bring 37 preschool children from 78th Street and its sister center, 12th Avenue Station, to the zoo. With a discount from Lowry Park, the Hillel students were able to pay for admission and some special treats for the children, such as pony rides, Herzog said.

Seventh-graders had raised money throughout the year to donate to the preschool and visited the children in December.

Leah, 13, helped organize an iPod drawing to benefit the different efforts throughout the year. She and her friends had remembered a successful stuffed animal drawing from fifth grade and thought they could improve on it. They collected $5 donations from students to buy an iPod shuffle and sold tickets. They earned about $200.

Leah said it felt good to give to children who might need it.

'I have a nice house, a family,' she said. 'I go to private school. My life compared to these kids is amazing.'

The seventh-graders joined the third-grade group to host the children on the zoo trip. It was a chance to wear silly hats shaped like animals, feed the goats and play together. No one was thinking of their preschool buddies as community service projects, Leah said. 'They're just little kids,' she said