elementary

By Teagan King, Wisconsin State Journal – There’s a lot of prep work into getting schools ready for another year. Decorating bulletin boards, sharpening pencils, printing worksheets … For the last couple of weeks, more than 300 volunteers put in about 930 hours of service helping with these and other tasks, part of a growing volunteer project known as Love Dane, a partnership between more than 20 Dane County churches and Madison-area schools to prepare for the start of the school year. This year, 26 churches are registered to participate at schools around Dane County. Read more of this story.

As a single mother and elementary-school music teacher in Alamogordo, N.M., Cheryl Dockray usually umpires all the summer softball games she can to make ends meet.But in early June, she took a rare week off — and worked even harder than usual. With eight other adults and 13 young people from Alamogordo’s Grace United Methodist Church, she helped gut a New Orleans home that had been rotting in floodwaters for nine months. Read more.