Kids learn ‘shear’ joy of giving Glenburn community donates its locks

loading...

GLENBURN – No more tangles!

That’s just one of the benefits of short hair, according to Andy Maxsimic, a computer teacher at Glenburn Elementary School.

“And there’ll be lots less preparation,” said Maxsimic, accustomed to shampooing and conditioning his long, strawberry-blonde hair each morning.

“I’ll gain 10 to 20 minutes a day!” said the good-natured young man who agreed to have his hair cropped short during an assembly Friday.

Maxsimic was helping kick off the school’s Kindness and Justice Challenge, sponsored by the Martin Luther King Jr.’s Do Something Foundation.

The children’s good deeds, which must be witnessed by a parent, a teacher or another student, will be recorded at the Glenburn School entrance.

Participating students will receive a certificate signed by Martin Luther King III.

If the school accumulates a thousand acts of kindness, the news will be published on the Internet, according to guidance counselor Cynthia Fowlow.

Maxsimic got the ball rolling in a couple of ways.

He is donating his hair to Locks of Love, a nonprofit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children across the country who are suffering from long-term medical hair loss.

But the teacher’s good deed will resonate locally as well.

Offering raffle tickets to determine who would cut his hair, Maxsimic raised more than $300 to be donated to the Andy Butler Memorial Skate Park building fund.

Struck and killed last summer while in-line skating, Butler would have been an eighth-grader at the school.

Hijinks abounded Friday as staff and students gathered to watch Maxsimic get his 15-inch long ponytail lopped off.

Fowlow, who won the raffle drawing the previous day, elicited peals of laughter as she walked toward Maxsimic with a saw in one hand and a toolbox in the other.

In fact, she told the audience, she had decided not to play barber after all.

That honor would go to fourth-grader Emily Gallant, who purchased a whopping 12 raffle tickets!

The little girl, who had not known about her assigned role beforehand, gamely stepped forward and took hold of the scissors.

In just a few seconds she was holding up the teacher’s shiny, golden hair as onlookers rose, applauded and cheered loudly.

The hair will be especially appreciated since it isn’t artificially colored, Fowlow said representatives from the Locks of Love organization told her.

Maxsimic apparently had started something.

Soon teacher Angela Landry was making her way down the bleachers.

“Andy inspired me,” said Landry, who donated her long, chestnut-colored hair to Locks of Love once before.

“I love kids and when somebody needs something that I can give, it’s important [to offer],” said Landry. Her ponytail was clipped by eighth-grader Chris Tarr, whose name was drawn out of a hat.

The haircutting marathon continued. It wasn’t long before eighth-grader Nicole Curlin was in the hot seat, with teacher Mark Morse taking the scissors to her long, blonde tresses.

“I wanted to help other kids since my grandmother had cancer,” she said.

Sixth-grader Emily Lad came forward with her blonde curls already in a plastic bag.

“I had 11 inches cut during vacation,” she said. “I thought it over – here I am with all this hair, while some people have none.”

Community residents also have jumped on the bandwagon, according to Fowlow. An anonymous man recently dropped off his ponytail at the school office, she told the group. “You’ll know what to do with this,” he said.

For his part, Maxsimic will miss the long, flaxen hair that has become his trademark.

“When kids here think of me, they think of my hair,” he said. “I enjoy my long hair, but it’s not important enough that I couldn’t get it cut for a cause like this.

“Anyway, it’ll grow back.”