Overview
Your MCI team is looking forward to a productive and successful 2025 as we support and work with the children and staff at the O’Brien School, our partners in the East Hartford Schools. During the remainder of the school year, we will be exploring with Principal Leja giving the school’s ELL (English Language Learners) students more resources. Thirty percent of the students at O’Brien are ELL learners.
Our classroom volunteers continue to help the K-4 teachers weekly. We recently received thank you notes from the children. Check out the MCI bulletin board in the hallway across from Schultz Hall for a few examples. Also, we received an email from a special education teacher regarding funding for materials she received last spring. Here are her words. “Just a little message to thank you for your support. The Micah Children’s Initiative is such an amazing resource and we are thrilled to be selected as your partnership school. Our area carpet that was purchased through your funding…fits our whole class!!”
We continue to support the Mini-Grants and Grade Level Support requests that teachers apply for to fill needs in their classrooms. The funding for these grants come from your contributions to the Love for Children Capital Campaign. Recent Grade Level Support requests included a large white board, magnetic number lines and community helpers dress-up clothing. In late December we ordered 40 long-sleeved polo shirts and 30 fleeces in youth sizes for the Clothing Closet. The funds for all these items came from your contributions to the Love for Children Capital Campaign and from contributions given in Rev. David T. Taylor’s name.
Volunteers participated in the school’s Create a Gingerbread House evening. We also helped with the annual Holiday Store, where children bought small gifts for family and friends.
First Church is making a difference at O’Brien School. If you are interested in getting involved with this initiative or just learning more, please contact Sharon Conway at sconway@massmutual.com, Andrew Wicks at andrew@glastonburyfirst.org or Jen Anglim (for questions specific to in-person volunteering) at anglimjennifer@yahoo.com.
About the Micah Children's Initiative
We believe in the inherent dignity, worth and value of every child and their right to a good education. It troubles us to live in a region where the local tax base plays an outsized role in the educational support that children receive. Through the generosity of our congregation, we provide volunteers and material support as we partner with the children and staff of O'Brien School.
Over the last several years we have opened a clothing closet with school uniforms and winter apparel, read remotely to students for the United Way’s Read for the Record program, conducted teacher appreciation events and cleaned the school courtyard. We have also donated children's books and other classroom materials, purchased water bottles for each student, provided COVID-19 safety supplies and added a new welcome banner to the school entrance.
We have committed to the East Hartford Public Schools that our partnership will be collaborative, supportive, multi-faceted, needs-based, participatory, well-funded, sustainable and strategic, and we envision in the coming decades a continuing blossoming of this relationship.
Our work so far is only the tip of the iceberg in what we envision for our long-term partnership. We look forward to increased face-to-face interaction and expanding our support to the entire O’Brien community.
Capital Campaign 2022
In his address to the Second Annual Meeting of the Southern New England Conference
(SNEC), our Executive Conference Minister, Rev. Darrell Goodwin, challenged us to be
the Church that wants to be noticed! Our founders chose to locate our Meetinghouse
in the center of Glastonbury and decided to rebuild it after fire and hurricane with
the tall steeple so that townspeople would notice. We decided to renovate the Hale
House property into the Micah House and Chapel – a sacred space for spiritual
renewal, conversation and learning, engagement, discipleship and worship – so our community would notice. We chose to enter into covenant with many other UCC
congregations to be in community with all children of God as an open, welcoming
and affirming congregation. And, we chose to implement the recommended mission
endeavor of a school-church partnership with the East Hartford Public Schools
(EHPS) and their O’Brien School.
What do all these choices have in common? When we choose to be noticed,
what do we start with? The answer is a lot of trust – in our leadership, in ourselves and in God – yet still, a leap of faith. What will we look like at the end, how will we be changed, can we really do this? These are all questions that might be asked at the beginning of any major new initiative. But we confidently asked the EHPS to leap with us in a collaborative, multi-faceted, needs-based, participatory, well-funded, sustainable and
strategic partnership. We chose O’Brien over other options for the opportunity to change the lives of children, to make a difference in our community and world – to be noticed.
During the pandemic, we began to lay the foundation for this transformative partnership.
Our work so far is only the tip of the iceberg in what we envision for our long-term
partnership. We dream of a time of increased face-to-face interaction and of expanding
our support to the entire O’Brien community. In terms of the funds and what function(s)
or position(s) they MIGHT be used for, we don’t know that yet, but it will be guided by the
needs of the O’Brien students and community. Based on other school-church partnerships, it could be a part-time social worker interacting with the O’Brien students and their families. Or it could be an after-school director of programming who organizes various opportunities for O’Brien children. Or it could be a volunteer coordinator who works with the leaders at O’Brien to arrange for 20, 30 or 40 First Church volunteers to be involved in all aspects of the school community as tutors, coaches, art and music teachers, etc. Or it could be _____________ [insert your dream for children here!]
Part of the challenge and beauty of this living partnership is that it is still evolving –
we haven’t discovered exactly how our campaign monies will be used. We have an
endowment fund policy that will guide the prudent and effective use of the funds raised.
This effort to demonstrate Love for Children in our Community will be led by our
amazing MCI committee that has been meeting for close to nearly two years. With
Nancy Tandon, Judy Rozie-Battle, Laurie DiTomasso, Olivia LaFargue, Kristen O’Brien,
Rick Standish, Jim Hartung, Kim and Nagy Mishriky, Susan Parmelee, Dan Martin and
Andrew Wicks, we can’t go wrong. They are leading the way with this partnership and
envisioning, with EHPS and O’Brien School leaders, what is to come.
Even through the difficulties of a pandemic, our MCI team has laid the foundation for
improving the education and the lives of the O’Brien children: providing water bottles
to each child, collecting gently used books for our kindergarten cohort, hanging a new
welcome banner at the school entrance, conducting a teacher appreciation event with
yummy cupcakes, opening a clothing closet with Hartford Foundation grant funds we
were awarded, sprucing up the school courtyard and reading remotely for the United
Way’s Read for the Record program. There is so much more to do, so much more we can
do, and we are only limited by the time and talents of First Church volunteers.