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Students meet challenge to help teacher's friend

By JEFF WEBB
Published September 14, 2005

Tiffany Howard, a sixth-grade language arts teacher at Hernando County's newest school, Challenger K-8 School of Science and Mathematics, is the first to admit that sometimes middle school students live up to the name of the school.

"They can be quite challenging," she says.

But a recent experience in her classroom reminded her that "deep beneath the hormones and sometimes not-so-pleasant attitudes, are caring and giving individuals."

Those comments were included in a letter Tiffany Howard wrote to the Times on Monday night. In it she told a tale of having her heart warmed by the generosity of the 135 11-year-olds she teaches.

After graduating from Central High School in 1997, she attended Florida State University, where she was a member of the Alpha Sigma chapter of the Delta Zeta sorority. There she met Michelle Hale. Since she graduated in 2000, she hasn't seen a lot of Michelle, but they've bumped into each other at football games and such, and they e-mail fairly often.

But Howard knew that Michelle recently married Mike DeShazo, a lawyer, and that not long ago Michelle took the bar exam to become a lawyer. She was supposed to learn if she passed the test Sept. 30. Until then, they were waiting in their apartment in New Orleans.

Then came Katrina.

Through a computer list that serves the Delta Zeta sisters, Howard learned that Michelle and her husband fled the city before the storm hit and made it safely to a relative's house in northern Louisiana. They are living there with seven other displaced family members whose homes, like the DeShazos, were destroyed or left unhabitable.

Howard also has learned that her friend will have to take the bar exam again. The storm destroyed hers.

As Howard put it, the DeShazos "now only have the love that they share for each other. Katrina has taken everything."

Sept. 1, Howard told her class about her friend's plight. The next day, she pulled an empty 1-gallon plastic container of Mott's apple juice from her recycling bin and brought it to her classroom. That same day, Howard sent a letter home with students explaining to parents that she was accepting "pocket change if they wanted to help my friends in their time of need."

Howard says "I figured if every kid went home and raided their parents' change dishes, we might collect 50 or 60 bucks."

But the youngsters, as they often do, exceeded her expectations.

One student donated $15 he had been given for his birthday two weeks earlier. Some students told Howard they did chores around the house to earn extra allowance. Some made withdrawals from their piggy banks.

By the following Friday "the jug was overflowing. I never imagined that my students would donate so much," she said. "It was really crammed in there. I had to cut the jug open to count it."

The total was $545; there was $441 in paper money and the rest in change, which she transferred to a Tupperware container and took to the bank so a machine could count it.

Howard plans to use the cash to buy an American Express check card and mail it to Michelle.

Along with it she will include six greeting cards, one from each of the six language arts classes she teaches, and signed by every student.

Tiffany Howard was looking out for her sorority sister. She didn't need to look very far to find some some people who were looking out for their teacher.

Reach Jeff Webb at webb@sptimes.com or 352 754-6123.

[Last modified September 14, 2005, 02:15:34]