By Andrew Martins, Managing Editor
As the country geared up for its annual celebration of pigskin, fried foods and advertising, two teams of fifth graders at Auten Road Intermediate School worked with their parents to gather cans of soup for a noble cause., On the morning of February 3, the two teams, comprised of two homerooms and roughly 50 students each, celebrated the Third Annual Soup-er Bowl Collection Drive, announcing that they had collected 2,214 cans of soup and other perishables from four homerooms., Though Team 5J, of Diane Lyons’ and Carrie Sanchez’s homerooms, won the contest with 1,284 total collected cans, Ms. Lyons said Team 5K, of Beth Raff and Mindi Andreski’s homerooms, were thrilled to hear the final tally., “Friday was fantastic because the other team had smiles on their faces and were so excited,” she said. “We knew in the end that it was all about donating this food to our community.”, Having organized the canned food collection drive for the last three years, ARIS teacher Diane Lyons said she originally got the idea from a successful drive in another part of the state., “I whole-heartedly admit that I took this idea from my son’s school, Brunswick Acres Elementary School in South Brunswick,” she said. “When I had seen (their Soup-er Bowl), I asked for their blessing to run it.”, Since its introduction to Auten Road Intermediate School in 2014, the students have consistently increased the size of their donations each year., “(When) we started it three years ago, we thought we’d collect a couple hundred cans. We got 1,000,” Ms. Lyons said. “Last year, we were a little over 2,000 and this year we beat last year’s total by more than 50 cans.”, Since Jan. 23, students in the four homerooms worked to better their classmates in the size of their donations., That type of friendly competition was fueled in large part, Ms. Raff said, by proximity of all four classes, which are situated in a corner of the school’s second floor., “Every day for two weeks during school days, the kids could see which team was ahead or behind on the bulletin board. It really acted as a motivator to bring in more cans,” Ms. Raff said. “The kids and parents went way beyond our expectations.”, Though the “Soup-er Bowl” specifically requested cans of soup, the teachers said they did not turn away any other canned items., “We tried to emphasize some protein in the meals, so we did get some beans and Spaghetti-O’s, but a majority of it was soup,” Ms. Raff said., Following the reveal, three mothers of some of Ms. Raff’s students brought the more than 2,000 cans to the Hillsborough Food Pantry at the township’s municipal building, while one mother from Ms. Lyons’ class offered to help sort the cans out., With the drive now behind them, Ms. Lyons said the kids have been left with a sense of accomplishment., “For our students, it was very tangible. They could touch the cans, they could see the volume that was collected, they loved counting it,” she said. “It’s easier to teach off of this than something intangible like when you donate money. They had to make the effort.”, More than 100 families are currently registered for assistance from the township’s food pantry., The large donation has since caught the attention of the township committee and Mayor Carl Suraci, who will present the teams with an official proclamation honoring their contribution during the Feb. 28 meeting., “This is a lesson that’s not in the core curriculum, but that kids need to learn through this project,” Ms. Lyons said. “We hope that these kids take this idea other places.”
