CLEVELAND — One educator in northeast Ohio is instilling the value of volunteering through a passion project at his school.
John Dorotics said he uses familiar hand signals to teach students how to pack care bags for Willson’s Wall of Love, even though he’s not completely fluent in sign language.
“Want to put out socks? Or socks? This is shoes. Socks,” Dorotics said, as he worked out the correct way to sign the words.
Dorotics is a gym teacher at Willson School, which offers services to students who are deaf and hard of hearing. He said he started their Wall of Love when the COVID-19 pandemic first began.
“You know, a lot of people didn’t have basic human needs, you know? So, we knew we just wanted to help our community in any way we could be involved,” Dorotics said.
Dorotics said he tries to put up new batches of care bags at least once a week with the help of his students.
“We try to get the students involved as much as we can,” Dorotics said. “There are ways that you can give back to your own community.”
One student who helps prepare bags for the wall is Noah Reed. Reed used an interpreter to share what item he thinks is most needed.
“I think deodorant is most important,” Reed said.
With a box full of packaged care bags in hand, Reed and his interpreter, Tehya Morgan, headed outside with Dorotics to restock the wall before Reed had to get back to class.
Dorotics said, “Noah actually helped me starting last year, when we came back from COVID-19.”
Reed’s connection to the project goes beyond just helping out with it. The seventh grade student’s mom, Crystal Thompson, added his family was once gifted a bunch of care bags from the school after his entire family contracted symptoms of COVID-19 at the same time.
“The items from the wall, like the toothpaste, and the soap, and all of that really came in handy. So, when I got out of the hospital, I was still on oxygen, still kind of recuperating, you know, [and] I didn’t have to worry about going to the store to buy those things,” Thompson said.
It’s this lesson of philanthropy Dorotics said he hopes to teach through the wall.
“I wanted to show them they could be kind every day by doing something. It doesn’t matter what,” Dorotics said.
