Retired teacher Johanna Korpita doesn’t just donate to the Sidney F. Smith Toy Fund every year: she’s also taught so many students to do the same, a tradition some are now passing on to their own children.
“It just gives you a good feeling to know that hopefully you’re making a difference,” she said.
Korpita’s 40-year teaching career included time in Easthampton and Chesterfield, but most of it was spent in Williamsburg. There, she started an annual tradition. Every December, she would teach her first- and second-grade students lessons about “caring and sharing,” which included raising money for the Toy Fund.
As they brought in money, she would help them tally it up, teaching them about adding three-digit numbers. They’d also talk in circle time about how they got the money, be it from birthday cards, chores or the tooth fairy. “First and second graders lose lots of teeth!” Korpita said. She also held a food drive, and the students would sort and classify the food as it came in each day.
Korpita wanted her students to understand that even small amounts have value and that “everybody could contribute, whether they found a dime in the parking lot or a quarter in the sofa.”
It wasn’t just a lesson in math. It was a way of “trying to give the kids an opportunity to feel good about what they could do to help folks that were less fortunate than they were, to try to encourage them to think that the [holiday season] wasn’t all about, ‘Oh, what can I get?’” she said.
Korpita added, “First and second graders are so impressionable. They want to please, they want to be do-gooders, so this is the perfect opportunity to instill those values in them, and no matter what your financial situation is, they can still help out and make a difference.”
In the past few weeks, Korpita got comments on her Facebook from former students, now adults, who told her that they’d kept the tradition of donating to the Toy Fund going with their own children.
“That just warms my heart,” she said, “to know that we can make a difference in so many different people’s lives and have some sort of an impact.”
“After 40 years,” she added, “they’re still my kids.”
Named after a former business manager at the Gazette, the Toy Fund began in 1933 to help families in need during the Depression. Today, the fund distributes vouchers worth $65 to qualifying families for each child from age 1 to 14.
To be eligible for the Toy Fund, families must live in any Hampshire County community except Ware, or in the southern Franklin County towns of Deerfield, Sunderland, Whately, Shutesbury and Leverett, and in Holyoke in Hampden County.
The following stores are participating this year: A2Z Science and Learning Store, 57 King St., Northampton; Blue Marble/Little Blue, 150 Main St., Level 1, Northampton; High Five Books, 141 N. Main St., Florence; The Toy Box, 201 N. Pleasant St., Amherst; Comics N More, 64 Cottage St., Easthampton; Once Upon A Child,1458 Riverdale St., West Springfield; Plato’s Closet, 1472 Riverdale St., West Springfield; Sam’s Outdoor Outfitters, 227 Russell St., Hadley; Odyssey Bookshop, 9 College St., Village Commons, South Hadley; The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, 125 W. Bay Road, Amherst; Holyoke Sporting Goods Co., and 1584 Dwight St. No. 1, Holyoke.