WARM, FUZZY LESSON; GIFT OF CRITTERS TEACHES PUPILS RIGHT STUFF(ING).

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

Students at James Foster Elementary School are learning good citizenship and community involvement, life lessons they've taken upon themselves through several charitable community projects.

On Monday, youngsters presented the California Highway Patrol with more than 100 teddy bears they had collected in recent months. Officers from the CHP's Newhall station stopped by the school to pick up the stuffed animals, which they keep in their patrol cars for use at crash scenes involving children.

``If it's a traumatic experience, we give (the child) a bear, and that really calms them,'' said Officer Doug Sweeney, a CHP spokesman.

The teddy bear drive was one of several projects the students have undertaken at Foster Elementary. In April, the school held a tree-planting ceremony in memory of Anna Thompson, a playground aide who died of cancer last year.

Back in February, Foster Elementary students made hundreds of valentines that school officials brought to the Veteran's Administration hospital in the San Fernando Valley for distribution to the patients there, said Chris Bloore, a first-grade teacher who is also adviser to the student leadership class.

The students' current mission is to collect the pop-tops on aluminum beverage cans. The drive, started in the summer, will benefit the Ronald McDonald House, which provides housing for the families of sick children while the kids are hospitalized or receiving treatment.

``I have more than 100 pounds of aluminum pop-tops, and that's a lot because you figure a pop-top weighs nothing,'' Bloore said.

The Ronald McDonald House asks benefactors to save pop-tops because that is the part of a soda can with the highest concentration of aluminum, and is therefore extremely valuable for recycling, Bloore said.

``These are the most charitable-minded kids I've ever seen,'' Bloore said. ``At Christmastime, we collected food for the (Santa Clarita) Food Pantry,'' she said, adding that students ``adopted'' elderly residents of a Newhall convalescent hospital.

``I have to credit the parents for raising these kids to have this unselfish outlook on the world,'' Bloore added. ``There was not one (kid) who asked, What's in it for me?''

Bloore credited sixth-grader Jenny Stanley with suggesting the pop-top collection drive.

Stanley, 12, said students get caught up in the excitement of ``doing something good for the community.'' A fifth-grade class that collected the most pop-tops will receive an ice cream sundae party, she said.

Also, youngsters can relate to helping families of ill children with lodging at the Ronald McDonald House.

``They have big bills to pay,'' she said.

The experience has put Stanley on continuous lookout for the precious pieces of aluminum.

``If I see them on the ground, I'll pick them up and put them in my pocket,'' she said.

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2 Photos

PHOTO (1--Color) CHP Officers Tom Wyatt, left, and Doug Sweeney accept teddy bears from James Foster Elementary School teacher Chris Bloore and students, from left, Caroline Kyle, Rachel Hill, Heather Gordon and Tiffany House as part of a student program's teddy bear drive.

(2--Color) The CHP received several boxes of stuffed animals.

Shaun Dyer/Special to the Daily News