As we know, The Bert Show has their annual “Big Thank You” where people submit letters to soldiers to the station before Thanksgiving. The idea is that every soldier has a Thank You letter for Thanksgiving and feels loved and appreciated over the holidays. At Etowah High School, our advanced composition class decided we wanted to participate and support the Big Thank You.
As a self-project I put upon myself, I decided to orchestrate a day of writing where students and teachers could come into our writing center and write letters for the soldiers. This then brought up the idea of contacting the Bert Show to come in and witness everything we are accomplishing for the Big Thank You at Etowah. Brian agreed and visited our school on October 25th to pick up and thank us for the letters.
However, the process of putting this together was not easy. With the help of my classmates and my advanced composition teacher, we contacted other teachers seeing if they could encourage their students to write letters. Not only was there growing support from students, however the teachers loved the idea and made it an extra credit assignment in many classes. Our Advanced Composition class spent two days rushing to write letters in order to meet our goal of two thousand. Overwhelmed, I rushed to our football coach one morning stressed about how we could possibly come up with 2,000 letters for the Bert Show and asked him if there was any way he could ask his football players to write letters for the soldiers. Without hesitation, our football coach told me he would work on it and three days later brought 436 letters to the writing center. Even our softball team, currently preparing to play in the Elite 8, took time from their busy schedule in order to write letters for the soldiers.
In the end, Etowah High School put together over 2,200 letters to be distributed to soldiers over the holidays.
-Bombsquad Alexis
