Three months ago, the Preston Area School set out to collect a mile worth of pencils or 8,448 of them.
By February, they were two pencils past their goal, thanks to the students, faculty, local businesses and a community that cares.
“A total of 8,500 pencils were collected which made it possible for us to mail 500 pencils to 17 different schools across the United States,” said CTC Service Learning Coordinator Marge Burden in a thank-you letter to all who helped. “Schools to receive our help were chosen on the basis of having a high poverty rate of 90 % or higher. The students and I were amazed to learn that something as simple as a pencil could make such an impact on a student’s life.” 
They now hope to hear back from the benefiting schools, to start a pen-pal program with them. 
The pencil drive joins a long list of community service learning projects the kids have completed through the school’s 21st Century After School Program titled, “Tag You’re It.” “In the version of this childhood game that we play, we tag each other and challenge each other to perform a good deed in which we do not receive or accept a material reward,” Burden said.
Burden said the kids really have a heart for the projects. Just about every day, one or more of the students would approach her desk and ask the question, “Did we make it?” Not only did they make it, but they started another project, this time with the help of fellow schools in the Wayne Highlands School District. They collected new and used stuffed animals for Project Night Night, making bags for kids staying in homeless shelters, sending them 50 new stuffed animals along with books. That’s not counting the 500 stuffed animals they collected for The Safe Program in Womelsdorf, Pennsylvania, below Allentown, a national program benefiting abused women and children.
“This used to be my favorite,” some of the kids said, handing over a stuffed friend from their childhood for someone else to love.  
What else will they be doing? Burden says the 20-week program wraps up this week, but they’ll be running a five-week program in the summer. Burden can’t thank the community enough for all that they’ve done, “They really do respond to everything that we do,” she said.     
Pencil Math
The Preston Area School recently collected a mile worth of  pencils to benefit 17 different schools across the United States in areas where the poverty rate is 90% or higher.
 Marge Burden, CTC Service Learning Coordinator for Preston Area School’s 21st Century Grant After School Program, shares the math behind the project.
“If a mile is 5,280 feet. And a pencil is 7 1/2 inches long. And there are 63,360 inches in a mile. Then you divide 63,360 by 7 1/2. We would need 8,448 pencils.”
They collected 8,500 pencils between January and February.
“’Thank You,’ these two simple words mean so much. The entire Preston Area School would like to thank you for your donation of pencils and/or money which helped to make our pencil drive a great success,’” Burden said.