Episode Details

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. It is a holiday tradition started by one teacher at Herriman Elementary School, now helping homeless children and teens throughout the year. On this episode of the Supercast, find out how a pajama project is bringing comfort to people served by the Road Home Shelter on cold winter nights and beyond.

We're at Herriman Elementary to talk about a service project, and here with us is Kelly Grundy. Introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about this project.

Kelly Grundy:
My name is Kelly Grundy and I teach here at Herriman Elementary. I teach fourth grade and they're pretty amazing. We have started a pajama project. Actually I started it years ago, but my fourth grade class is joining in with us and we're gonna get it going and they're super excited.

Anthony Godfrey:
Now when you say years ago, it was 14 years ago. Am I correct?

Kelly Grundy:
Yes.

Anthony Godfrey:
That's a long time.

Kelly Grundy:
It's been a long time. I started, the idea came from teaching, actually. I'm a student from Bingham High School, and then when I started teaching, I taught in North Las Vegas. That was my first teaching job.

Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, wow.

Kelly Grundy:
And it was very different from where I came from. And a little bit of an eye opener. I taught a fifth grade class and when I was teaching there, my very first year, we were talking about traditions and I told them that we dress up alike at Christmas time and wear silly pajamas. And after the class discussion, I had a couple of students come up after, and they were in fifth grade and they said, Mrs. Grundy, what are pajamas? And I said, what do you mean? You know? And I didn't understand their question. They really didn't know what pajamas were because they'd been living in the shelter and it just wasn't something they were familiar with or needed in life.

And so that stuck with me and I ended up speaking with one of the counselors at the shelter and I told her about that experience because it was an odd moment for me. And she said, it's just not something they need. It's a want. It's not required for their life. You know, food and things come first. And that just broke me. And she also talked to me for a while about how symbolic pajamas are for kids in homeless shelters or in transient situations and how changing out of pajamas and putting on a new pair of clothes and doing that little routine at night really makes them feel like they have a home and makes them feel, you know, like they've got a different way of life. And that was really symbolic for them to change clothes at night. So once I heard that, I said, ‘okay, I'm in.’

So I've been collecting with my family, just here and there. My kids from the district, they'll tell their school teachers and we've been collecting for years. And when I would teach, we'd kind of do it here and there, or my community and stuff. So I've been doing it for 14 years, but last year when I started teaching fourth grade, I was telling my students about the project and I said, my family has been doing this for years. And they just lit up. They said, ‘we want help.’ So I thought, ‘oh, can they? Can I do that with kids?’ You know, are they gonna really do it? I mean, pajamas aren't cheap and I don't know if this is something they can do. The students here at Herriman and the community just went crazy. And they ended up collecting over 250 pairs, and we packaged t