East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania (ESU) professors are used to being the ones doing the teaching, but this week 30 faculty members got a lesson from a Wind Gap fourth-grader on how to bring art to children who have none.<\/p>\n
Bethany Kuster, a 10-year-old student at Wind Gap Middle School in the Pen Argyl Area School District, spoke to the ESU College of Education faculty Tuesday, March 22, about her project \u201cColor for Kids\u201d that has collected and delivered more than 1,200 pounds of crayons, markers, paints and other art materials to nearly 1,000 low-income children around the world within the past five months.<\/p>\n
ESU\u2019s education faculty and students are joining Bethany\u2019s effort by collecting art supplies on campus that Bethany and her family can ship to children in need, according to Terry R. Barry, Ed.D., dean of the College of Education.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we are looking to do is a service-learning project with our students,\u201d Dr. Barry said. Education professors will work with student organizations to collect the supplies, and donations can be dropped in the designated bins on the first and second floors of Stroud Hall on campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a really good reminder that some of the very best lessons in education have nothing to do with standardized achievement tests, Common Core and national curriculum, and everything to do with the children in your school and what\u2019s in their hearts,\u201d Dr. Barry said. \u201cHere\u2019s a little girl making a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bethany Kuster began her efforts last November after hearing about an elementary school in Alabama where the children had to share a packet of crayons because there were not enough for all.<\/p>\n
She approached her teacher, Scott Kupec, about collecting art supplies for those pupils and sending them to the school. Kupec was all for it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really like art and art makes people happy,\u201d Bethany said.<\/p>\n
Bethany\u2019s passion for the cause was infectious and soon she had her parents, Rachel and Kraig Kuster, and other students, teachers and principals on board. They shipped art supplies to the elementary school in Alabama and received beautiful thank you cards from the kids, made with their new markers and crayons.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has just taken off from there,\u201d Rachel Kuster said. \u201cArt is incredibly important to Bethany. She did not think it was fair that every kid did not have their own box of crayons.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Kusters started a website at www.colorforkids.net which shows Bethany with some of the supplies collected and where they have been delivered.<\/p>\n
Rachel Kuster said the project has spread rapidly, with schools in Fort Myers, Fla., Atlanta, Ga., Boston and Washington, D.C. working on replicating Bethany\u2019s effort.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve asked her many times, \u2018How long do you want to do this?\u2019 Rachel Kuster said. \u201cAnd she said, \u2018Until every kid has their own box of crayons.\u2019 And I said \u2018Well, there are millions of kids,\u2019 and she said, \u2018I know. I\u2019ll just keep going as long as I have crayons to give.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
For more information about ESU\u2019s endeavor to help Bethany, contact Dr. Barry at (570) 422-3377 or at tbarry1@esu.edu<\/a>. For more information on Bethany\u2019s project, \u201cColor for Kids,\u201d visit www.colorforkids.net<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania (ESU) professors are used to being the ones doing the teaching, but this week 30 faculty members got a lesson from a Wind Gap fourth-grader on how to bring art to children who have none.<\/p>\n Bethany Kuster, a 10-year-old student at Wind Gap Middle School in the Pen Argyl Area School District, spoke to the ESU College of Education faculty Tuesday, March 22, about her project \u201cColor for Kids\u201d that has collected and delivered more than 1,200 pounds of crayons, markers, paints and other art materials to nearly 1,000 low-income children around the world within the past five months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[143,22,42,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-facebook","category-news-release","category-slider"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13882"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13882"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13886,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13882\/revisions\/13886"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}