Students learn the power of giving through painting pet portraits

WINNECONNE, Wis. (InvestigateTV) — Seventh graders at Winneconne Middle School are painting pet portraits for a community project.

Students in Susan Meunier’s new leadership class are tracing and painting portraits of pets. Vaughn Wurtz and her classmates are working on the project at the school.

“We had to do a project for something to do with the community that benefits the community,” Wurtz said.

Aubrey Salm and Paul Reinke helped come up with the idea.

“We’re doing pet portraits for Go Fetch and we’re going to donate all of the money to the humane society,” Salm said.

Meunier said the students are working hard on the portraits.

“They are putting so much effort into it,” Meunier said.

She said the students told Go Fetch in an interview, “It might not be the best painting but we’ll try our hardest.” Meunier said they are trying hard on everything.

Meunier said the value of the project is in the lesson.

“I’m glad they’re seeing the work it does, but really the reward for that work, it’s definitely worth it to go out and be the positive light to see that carry on to other people,” Meunier said.

Meunier said she teaches math by trait.

“Even when I’m teaching math, we just want to teach good humans,” Meunier said. “I always tell them, our goal for you is to go out in the world and do good and be on your own, and in math, sometimes that’s hard to connect those, but this is really showing them we want them to be the positive.”

Reinke said he plans to continue the work.

“I’m going to keep doing this all the way through high school, maybe college,” Reinke said. “It feels amazing, helping people in general.”

Salm said the project has an effect on her classmates.

“Seeing how everyone, even in my class, it makes everyone so happy, knowing that it will make other people happy, it’s just amazing to know,” Salm said.

Wurtz said the school has a set of guidelines called the Winneconne Way.

“We have this thing called the Winneconne Way, it’s PAW: Practice Kindness, Always Show Respect and Work to do your Best,” Wurtz said. “I feel like this class really tries to follow those rules.”