Teachers Help the Needy at One Infamous Location

The following Nice One is based on a submission by Bianca Sanchez, a kindergarten teacher at the New Open World Academy in Los Angeles. Submit your Nice One story and you can be eligible for exciting prizes from AOL, including tickets to an exclusive AOL Music event and a VIP meet and greet with the artist. Weekly winners will have a $1,000 donation to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital made in their names. Sanchez is the first submitter to be selected for a donation to St. Jude!

A location once known for tragedy was the site of something much more uplifting this Thanksgiving.

Teachers at New Open World Academy in Los Angeles raised enough food to fill 21 Thanksgiving baskets, which were given to needy families at the school. The pilot school, which opened this year in the Los Angeles Unified School District, is located at the former site of the Ambassador Hotel. It was there that presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968.

The hotel, which has also been the site of several films and numerous Academy Award ceremonies, was demolished in 2005. NOW is the first of three schools planned for the land it once occupied.

After one NOW teacher brainstormed the Thanksgiving basket idea, fundraisers were held. What the school didn't raise in the fund-raising events -- which included a sock hop -- was supplemented by teachers, who donated enough for the needy families to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner.

The dinner effort suits the school's mission -- to produce college-ready students who are focused on social justice.


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