Trucker Buddies of the Month
TRUCKER BUDDY of the MONTH Tony Vallejo of Corpus Christi School has been nominated by Sonia Sison as a Trucker Buddy of the Month. We have been so blessed this year for having Tony Vallejo as our Trucker Buddy. He not only enriches the minds of these children with his stories and lessons that he shares from his journal, but also infuses in their young minds and hearts sound values that will help them become better persons wherever they are and whatever they do says Ms. Sison. Thanks to our Trucker Bud-dy Tony, he has helped my class become digital citizens. He has set up a web so we can commu-nicate and collaborate with him in a very interesting and exciting way. During our daily DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) time, the children use their laptops and read their Trucker Buddy Tony's stories. The lessons the children learn from his journals are things they never will read in any Social Studies, Math, Reading, and Science books. He gives us a vivid account and awesome pictures of his jour-neys and experiences. What is more, he makes them very enthusi-astic in figuring out answers to geography and math questions that he poses for them to think about. The children would race to solve the problems and couldn't wait to post their answers in his website. How often I wish I had the camera or video ready to capture the joy and excitement as my class real-ized that their Trucker Buddy has responded to their comments. Tony is also very interested in space exploration and sends the class updates in science and his-tory. He placed A Day in History and NASA spots in his blog. Along with all these, there is a music sec-tion where he carefully and spe-cially selected songs that warm the heart. One day they had a blast when they received a pack-age from Tony. He sent them read-ing materials and a dream catcher, which was placed, at the center of the classroom. Tony sent the class a video of his baby daughter and his wonderful family. Ms. Sison wanted everyone to know, Our heartfelt gratitude and appreciation also to the dedicated people behind the Trucker Buddy Program and to all its generous benefactors for making this tremendous learning-teaching experience possible and for opening up a bunch of brilliant opportunities for many truck driv-ers, teachers, students, and parents as well to com-municate and collaborate with one another. Tony Vallejo has done an excellent job of earn-ing the Trucker Buddy of the Month for April 2009. APRIL 2009 Fall 2009 8