'A day that unites people': Marburn Academy celebrates Thanksgiving traditions
Marburn Academy celebrated Thanksgiving with turkey, service projects and a pep rally.
“It’s just a wonderful day to celebrate the community, to celebrate who we are and that we’re together and we have a place where students feel understood, celebrated and supported,” said Jennifer Martin-Gledhill, the associate head of school.
The New Albany private school serves students who learn differently due to dyslexia, executive function difficulties and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Marburn, which has grades 1-12, was founded 40 years ago, and the school's annual Thanksgiving celebration and community service day started in 1986 with middle school students.
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"I want to make sure you recognize that you should be grateful for yourself," head of school Eldrich Carr told the students as they ate their Thanksgiving lunch Tuesday. “We’re just really proud of you."
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The school’s founder Marjorie Garek expressed her gratitude to the students as they ate a traditional Thanksgiving feast catered by Together and Company caterers. Each student wrote her a thank you note earlier in the school year in honor of the school's 40th anniversary.
“Today I wanted to come back and thank them," Garek said. “The whole purpose was to share with them the importance of being grateful. … It’s a very warm feeling to come back here. It’s like coming home.”
First- through fifth-grade students completed service projects after their Thanksgiving lunch, including preparing bags of food to be donated to the Westerville Area Resource Ministry.
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The students also wrote letters to the medical staff at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center during their classes.
And they made tie blankets and toiletry kits with toothpaste, shampoo and conditioner that will go to Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
Fifth-grader Sonja Wiley helped make a blanket with her Marburn classmates.
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“My favorite part about today is probably just remembering that around this time it’s special to spend time with the people you care about and that we are helping people,” she said.
The 10-year-old has been attending Marburn since third grade and likes doing service projects with her peers and friends.
“You get to help people with your classmates, which is also nice, so it’s not just helping a bunch of people with people I don’t know," she said. "I’m helping with people I know.”
'It’s a day where we can slow down and be happy with what we have'
Marburn's Thanksgiving celebration concluded with a pep rally featuring two basketball games where the faculty and staff faced off against the middle school and high school students.
The students erupted in cheers every time someone scored a basket, even if it was a faculty member.
Joel Thompson, a 16-year-old junior who has been attending Marburn since sixth grade, said he is thankful for his school and enjoys the Thanksgiving celebration.
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“The already high morale is even higher, everyone is very happy with each other and everyone gets along really well and it’s just happy times,” Thompson said.
He said he likes the Thanksgiving holiday because it's a day that unites people.
"It seems like that doesn’t really happen that much," Thompson said. "It’s a day where we can slow down and be happy with what we have.”
Megan Henry is the Columbus Dispatch's K-12 education reporter. Reach her at mhenry@dispatch.com or (614) 559-1758. Follow her on Twitter @megankhenry.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Marburn Academy: Thanksgiving means lunch, community service, rally
