Help For Kids Hurt By Superstorm Sandy TeachersFirst Donation To Supply Winter Needs

RESTON, Va., Dec. 18, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --  Learning will be easier and holidays brighter for kids in a small New Jersey town hard hit by Hurricane Sandy. On Wednesday, December 19, 2012, the Waretown school district will receive a $10,000 check from The Source for Learning, Inc. (www.sourceforlearning.org), to help the children of the district with some winter necessities.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110615/DC20589LOGO)

Many families in the District, which faces Barnegat Bay, lost everything when the monster storm roared ashore on October 29. Homes were flooded or totally destroyed and all their contents lost; those families are still trying to piece their lives back together.

Susan LaFaso teaches gifted and talented students at Waretown Elementary. She's also an active member of TeachersFirst (www.teachersfirst.com), a nonprofit online service for teachers, and serves on the TeachersFirst Educator Advisory Board. "We knew Hurricane Sandy's impact was devastating, and we couldn't even contact Susan for weeks—we were worried," said Candace Hackett Shively, Director of K-12 Initiatives for The Source for Learning, the parent organization of TeachersFirst. "Susan is dedicated and creative; she's been an invaluable resource for TeachersFirst—and therefore for teachers across the country. She's given so much to TeachersFirst that when we learned how badly her district had been affected, we wanted to give something back to her to help her students."

The donation from The Source for Learning will be used to provide basic needs such as coats, hats, gloves, and boots for the most severely affected children in Waretown Elementary (preschool to grade 3) and the Frederic A. Priff School (grades 4 to 6). Ms. LaFaso said, "We were thrilled when we heard about this gift—our town has received other kinds of assistance, but the need is still great. This will help our kids stay warm and dry—it's hard to learn, or even to attend school, when you have no protection against winter weather."

The Ocean Township PTA will receive the Source for Learning donation, and the school staffs will coordinate the purchase and distribution of the winter clothing and school needs.

TeachersFirst (www.teachersfirst.com) is a free, online resource for K-12 teachers, offering original content and teacher-authored reviews of more than 15,000 web resources and tools suitable for use in the classroom. The Source for Learning (www.sourceforlearning.org), the parent of TeachersFirst, is a nonprofit learning technologies corporation based in Reston, VA. The Source for Learning is also the creator of GrowUpLearining.com, PreschoolFirst.com, TeachersAndFamilies.com, and SFLMedia.com.

SOURCE The Source for Learning