CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Members of a first grade class at Faulk Elementary school in Aransas Pass will soon be published authors.
First grade teacher Amanda Hawes said she has a passion for writing and wanted to pass that on to her students.
Hawes said she had each student create their own unique monster along with personal story which focuses on persevering through hard times.
“We already wrote a collaborative book on perseverance and the theme is monsters are learning to persevere,” said Amanda Hawes First Grade Teacher.
The students thought of a task that might be difficult for them and had their monster work through it.
“My story was about my monster was persevering to dive but he kept drowning and drowning and then he persevered it and did it," said Kadence Staley who is a First grader.
Hawes said her first grade students are special and have learned to overcome trauma. She said the kids were only 3 years old when hurricane Harvey hit, they did not get to finish kindergarten because of a global pandemic hit, and then they were out of school for a week because of the Texas freeze.
Hawes said some students also suffer trauma form home and for those students, school is a safe place.
“So, it’s an important life skill to see that they can preserver when things are hard to not give up and that once you practice and practice it’ll get easier,” said Hawes
“And I just think for a young child to know that lesson and have it embedded in their mind at such a young age is such phenomenal and it’s going to carry with them for the rest of their lives, said parent Tricialyn Carr.
Now that Mrs. Hawes has and her students have published a book, what’s next? “I found a company called Budsies, said Hawes.
She would like to give her students something else they can take with them for the rest of their lives and needs help from the community to make it happen.
“And what Budsies does is they take 2D artwork that children create and they are able to make it into a stuffed animal or plushy. My goal is that they will be excited about the book and we will kind of be celebrating that and I can surprise them with the main character of their book and their stuff animal to really bring their story to life, ” said Hawes.
Hawes said she expects to have hard copies of the book towards the end of the month and wants to surprise her students with their own stuffed animal before the school year ends.
To help donate to her class click here.