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Jayda Lindquist helps her first-grade teacher Rynae McKinney count the number of shoes they collected by tens, using a chain link she and her classmates made for the drive. 

First graders at College Place Elementary helped load boxes and bags of shoes into a car on Thursday to be sent to Haiti.

For two weeks, students watched as sandals, tennis shoes and dress shoes – mostly in pairs, but a few single soles – piled up in the back of Ms. McKinney’s first-grade classroom.

The school collected more than 500 shoes for Haiti earthquake relief.  The drive carries on the mission of Molly Hightower, a 22-year-old from Port Orchard who died in the Jan. 12 earthquake while volunteering at a Haitian orphanage. 

In Haiti, Hightower worked to provide shoes for orphans, who are often barefoot or have only one shoe.

Inspired to continue Molly’s mission, Rynae McKinney helped her first graders start a shoe drive.  She felt supporting the mission would be a good way for students at College Place to give back those in need in Haiti.

“I was teaching units about families in different cultures and about helping other people and what does it mean to be a global citizen, so it was a perfect opportunity,” said Jessica Cahan, McKinney’s student teacher. 

As shoes piled up in a box outside of the classroom, the first graders started understanding the impact they were making, Cahan said.

“Kids would come in really excited to be able to give the shoes from other classes,” she said.  “They’d say ‘Look at the shoes we have.’ It was awesome.”

They accepted single shoes as well as pairs, due to the growing number of amputees in Haiti.

“We’re collecting shoes for Haiti because the earthquake took their shoes,” said first grader Jayda Lindquist.  “We have to collect shoes because they’re walking on the rocks right now going ‘Ouch, ouch, ouch.’”

McKinney and Cahan had the first graders work as a class to tie pairs of shoes together and count the shoes by tens.  They had the students make a chain link for every shoe they collected.

“That’s what we’re working on as a class, is how to make a 10 to count,” McKinney said.

“The making of the chains was really tedious but … they really stuck with it and were so excited, and really started to get the idea of the one-to-one correspondence between the chain and the shoes.” 

First grader Emmett McKillop said he had fun counting all the shoes.

“That was a huge number and a lot of shoes,” he said.  “We made a chain that [went] almost all the way around the classroom.  That was a huge chain.”

On Jan. 4, the first-grade class carried the collected shoes out to Cahan’s car and watched as their teachers shoved boxes and bags into the trunk and backseat.

“It’s very nice to help people because we can help them,” Lindquist said.  “When we heard about the earthquake in Haiti, I was shocked.  When they said Molly died and people died, that’s sad.  People need some help.”

Cahan dropped off the shoes at the Q13 Fox studio to then be shipped to Haiti.

Q13 FOX News and Friends of the Orphans, the charity Hightower was supporting while in Haiti, is continuing Molly’s mission to donate hundreds of shoes to earthquake survivors in Haiti.

For more information on Molly’s mission or Friends of the Orphans, go to www.q13fox.com/news/friendsoftheorphans.