Contest: Why We Fight
Perhaps you remember Mr. K, who asked donors to give his students the bird — for his hands-on geometric origami unit. We funded his project on 2 October, so to tell you the truth, I’d forgotten him.
Yesterday, while checking in various packages from my P.O. box, I opened one whose return address didn’t seem familiar, and what should pop out of the top as if spring-loaded but a little purple paper crane and an origami box.
Further down, I found a note:
Dear Sarah,
Thanks for giving us the bird! My students thought it would be fun to give you some birds right back. So here are 100 of them. You can open them up further too. We kept them compact for mailing. Included are some of our geometric shapes as well.
When given a variety of opportunities to excel, it’s delightful and amazing what these students can do.
Thanks again!
Mansoor K., Math Teacher, Austin Can! Academy
The photo is of a red crane enjoying some branch time on my patio. Not shown: me opening the box and starting to cry.
Not only is Mr. K finding innovative ways to teach; he’s also taking the time to track down my postal information, have his students fold a flock, and give me the bird times a hundred.
Thanks for being awesome, Mr. K — and Mr. K’s student origami strike team.
Ten (10) winners today will receive a bird, and some TN swag, for donating to any project they’d like. You forward me a receipt, I’ll try to give you the bird.
Tags: contests friends origawesome snif!
Sniffle. And happily donating again. Mr. K and Tomato Nation really are origawesome (we need to trademark that word STAT). :’)
Holy snif, Batman!
Who knew getting the bird could be so awesome?
Meep. I’m all soggy and lip-wobbly now. So awesome.
Gah with the tears!! I was all “Oh that’s so cool!” then sniff, sniff, TEARS! I hope you know how much we all love you and the opportunity to do this every year. Yes there is the competition, the fun prizes, the promise of making you do something spectacularly tomato-y, but your commitment and the amount of people you help only gets bigger and better.
Thanks a million lady! You are awesome!
Oh, Jesus Mary. I’m one of the (seemingly few) people that doesn’t spend my October in tears, but this one got me. And on the one day this month I wore mascara, too!
Office getting dusty….
Man.
Well, I just got two unexpected refund checks from my car insurance so there’s another $100 back into the contest’s pocket! This is toooo much fun!
snif. snif. snif.
I really want to figure out a way to keep this guy stocked with origami paper.
I love that we funded a project for Austin Can! I have colleagues who work in the Dallas and Ft. Worth Can! Academies, and these are often students that everyone else has written off. When Mr. K says that these students are amazing when given the opportunity to excel, he expresses the hope that can and should underlie teaching. The kids at Can! are often on their third strike, and the fact that we did something to bring beauty, curiousity, and generosity to their world touches me — deep in the heart of Texas, if you will.
That’s so cool!
Since this is the most current post, I’m hoping fellow TN donators can help me out. For those of you who signed up for the monthly donations and got a $50 giving card, how did it arrive (post, email, pigeon), and how long did it take?
I’m asking because I got acknowledgement and a message that my card was ‘coming soon’, and crickets since then.
You know, I was having a kind of crappy morning, and then I came here and checked the total and read this post, and suddenly, the world is looking much brighter.
Between breaking $100k and the origami, I’m not sure if “awesome” covers it here. I feel like we need a new word. “Stupendawesome”? “Spectaculawesome”? Anyone?
I also can’t help wondering what the cats think of their new 100 best bird friends …
I needed that. I was in a bad mood today, but now my mood has been lifted by a hundred little paper birds popping out of a box.
@MsC I signed up for the recurring donation on October 14th and got the gift card, via email (it’s really just a code to use at check out) yesterday, the 20th, so that’s a turnaround of a week, but it was 5 business days. Hope that helps :) Way to go by the way!
@Liz: Thanks! The email I got from them said I would receive it ‘within 30 days’ which seemed long unless they were sending a physical card, and I had seem comments from other TNers about getting theirs. But I didn’t want to bother DC if a lag was typical.
Also, if you split the $50 code over multiple projects, you only have to put the code in once. It will remember that you have $45 (or whatever) in credit left.
Between the hundred little paper birds popping out of a box and getting an email that the project I’d been pushing on my FB page and blog has been fully funded (Ukuleles for Music in NC), I’m thinking it’s really, REALLY dusty right here in the general vicinity of my computer. Snif, indeed.
I should clarify: there were a hundred birds, but only one of them sprang out. It’s not like I was Tippi Hedren or something. Still, it was really cute. “[cutting tape] spoing!”
That is awesome, ma’am.
Also: the name Mansoor means “victorious.” Sign?
Wow, I have to step away from my somewhat-obsessive Tomato Nation-checking for a couple days due to an audit at work, and I tune back in to over $100,000 and a whole class giving Sars the bird. That’s the best audit result we’ve had in years.
This is so amazing. I spent the past week at a conference with spotty internet access, but I did check TN a few times just to see how the contest was going. I’m so glad to be a part of something this big! I got home today and saw that my $50 giving card from Donors Choose was waiting in my email inbox. Added it to the pile. Yay!
I found you over the DC site and got hooked on the enthusiasm and the general awesomeness around here. So I just had to tell you that you are all amazing. It’s really impressive what you do to help the kids. On Monday you inspired me to scratch my last possible donation this month together. On Tuesday I went to sleep after the challenge was posted (here 1 a.m.) and figured since I’m ahead in time I can sit down after work and see what more I can do to help meet it. I got home and WOW!!!! You did it and beat it and then went above and beyond. Unbelievable! I just got some donations back form expired projects (sob, snif) so I hereby decided to throw it in the big pot. Signed up for the 50$ card too, if I get it in time it’s all yours. Keep it up Tomato Nation! You rock!
…Aw. That’s such a lovely gesture. It reminded me of Sadako and the paper cranes. *sniffle*
Sniff. I cried; I scrounged the change out of the couch; and the kids in Chi-town’s “Battle of the Books” were impossible to resist.
The image of someone opening a package and being overwhelmed by sproinging paper cranes is kind of funny, though. “Whatever can this be…aiiiyeeee!”
Do any of you read PostSecret? This secret (http://tinyurl.com/yk9ysm3) was posted today, and I want more than anything to believe that it’s one of “our” cranes.