DIXON, CA (MPG) - Creating a line of art and thank you letters from 3rd through 8th grade students, a small group of teachers worked alongside American Legion Post member Wayne Holland to tape up a sweet display of appreciation for the military at Dixon’s Veterans Memorial Hall in time for Veterans Day.

“Students didn’t even know what a veteran was,” said Gretchen Higgins 5th grade teacher, Elizabeth Brown, as she taped another picture up on the wall.

It’s difficult to teach elementary school children about veterans, but even more difficult to teach about concepts of our country’s freedom to special needs students"'but that wasn’t going to stop Emily Bennett, the organizer of the display. Bennett is a Gretchen Higgins Instructional Aid on her way to a teaching credential. One of her professors challenged her to do a Service-Learning Project with a goal of getting young students involved in something that would affect the community. Veterans Day was coming and a handful of others wanted to help.

She has been working in Special Ed for 11 years and attributes her heart for special needs students to her sister, a woman who was partially paralyzed and had difficulty speaking after a brain aneurysm at age 21, and who has since died. Bennet said she knew her students could learn the meaning of the special day honoring those who died serving our country.

She joined up with 4th grade teacher Katie Lavine, Tony Lucas, another Special Ed teacher, and Brown. Lucas found a couple coloring pages that showed the different military branches that the children colored while they learned the different branches of the military and which each one did. The others found a video for the children to watch and another inspired thank you letters.

“We talked about what veterans did for our county and I was most surprised about how thankful the students were,” said Bennett. The students wrote out thank you cards to the veterans.

The group wanted to display the students’ work and Brown had a family member involved in the Veterans Memorial Hall so arrangements were made with Bennett and last week, the teachers displayed the drawings, colorings, and thank you notes along the walls inside the building.

“The students have an amazing sense of unity in the world,” said Bennett. The group found that a lot of students have a military member in their family but the concept that they signed up to serve the country was new to them, Bennett explained.

“The lesson resonated with each student differently as they learned the kind of impact they made,” she said. “Our military veterans have done a great service and continue to do that everyday. I was touched by what the students wrote. We hope when they see the messages, they’ll feel loved.”