Lincoln Elementary School students show off all of the socks the school collected in October for Socktober. Pictured are: Charlie McAdoo, Kendyl Murray, Evelyn Bergman, Donald Yeung and Jayden Nwoha.

Lincoln Elementary School students went a little “sock-crazy” in October but it was all for a good cause – to help out their community. Each month, the school’s PBIS team focuses on a character trait school wide. As Bullying Prevention Week is in October, the school focused on kindness.

“We were looking for an innovative way to reinforce kindness and thought having the school participate in Socktober to help out our community would be an easy and fun way to do it,” said Lincoln Elementary School teacher & PBIS Tier I Coach, Melissa Forster.

The entire school collected socks for the month of October. Brad Montague created Socktober when he realized there was a large homeless population in his hometown, and he wanted to do something about it. While researching the needs of the homeless community, he learned that socks are the items least donated to homeless shelters. So Brad took action. He began to film himself wishing people “Happy Socktober!” as he gave out pairs of socks on the streets, and he posted these videos on social media. Since then, Socktober has exploded. Kids and adults around the world started their own sock drives to benefit their local homeless shelters.

See SOCKTOBER, Page D7

Last year, participants on all seven continents donated pairs of socks.

“Our kids and families have been amazing bringing in so many socks,” said Lincoln Elementary School teacher & PBIS Tier I Coach, Jessica Dockwiller. “My class has already brought in 107 pairs of socks. Having something the kids can rally around really puts into action the concepts we are talking about as a school.”

The students have loved doing Socktober and understand its importance. Lincoln School is reading the book, “Have You Filled the Bucket?” This book encourages positive behavior by using the concept of an invisible bucket to show children how easy and rewarding it is to express kindness, appreciation, and love by “filling buckets.”

“It is really good to bring in socks because some people don’t have them,” said Lincoln Elementary School kindergartener Jayden Nwoha who brought in 32 pairs of socks. “It fills their bucket.”