A 100% student/alumni ran, nonprofit organization (est. 2019)
Wildcat Wishes Award Recipients (2020)
Gabrielle Halko
Orchestra teacher, 5th-8th Grade, Lauffer Middle/Los Ninos Elementary/Craycroft Elementary, Sunnyside Unified School District
Gabrielle has served the 5th-8th grade students of SUSD as a string orchestra teacher for 18 years and counting. For her Wildcat Wish, she requested materials to make music care packages for her students to take and use at home during the COVID pandemic! These materials included pinky holds to build good bow-holding habits, rubber duckies to practice proper instrument positioning, paper straws to help student learn to bow straight across their strings, orchestra pencils to promote their love of music, and music books!
Jennifer Wolf, Ph.D.
Teacher to deaf and hard of hearing students, 1st-10th Grade, Amphitheater and Catalina Foothills Unified School Districts
Dr. Wolf is currently a teacher to deaf and hard of hearing students in grades 1-10 within the Amphitheater and Catalina Foothills Unified School Districts. For her Wildcat Wish, Dr. Wolf received transparent face masks to distribute to her students and their educators! As one could imagine, when working with deaf and hard of hearing students, the presence of opaque masks is a real hinderance and blockage of communication between the student and teacher (especially since many of these hard of hearing student rely on reading lips to understand spoken language). However, these transparent masks will help to alleviate this communication barrier between teacher and student, and allow for improved comprehension, learning, and relationship building!
Kristen LaRosa
Counselor, DeGrazia K-6th, Marana Unified School District
Kristen is currently the school counselor at DeGrazia K-6 in the Marana Unified School District! For her Wildcat Wish, Kristen received a multitude of prizes to use in her implementation of a school-wide program promoting positive student behavior. Some of the items she received includes razor scooters, basketball, dolls, and more! Students will be able to earn these prizes through repeated demonstrations of positive behavior and interactions while in school. With the implementation of PBIS and the ART code, Kristen hopes to build good citizenship habits and feelings of accomplishment amongst her 374 students.
Victoria Arredondo
Special education teacher, 2nd-3rd Grade, Mission Manor Elementary, Sunnyside Unified School District
Miss V is currently a special education teacher to 2nd and 3rd graders at Mission Manor Elementary in the Sunnyside Unified School District. For her Wildcat Wish, Victoria received a fridge for her classroom! Being that her classroom is used by special education students, many of the student have special diets and bring their own food to class that needs to be refrigerated! Additionally, Miss V does weekly cooking lesson plans for her students; the fridge will be helpful in storing the fresh ingredients used in these lessons. The fridge will also be used to help teach her students basic living skills through interaction with a functional kitchen!
Jennie Lyons
Title I counselor, K-6th Grade, Roadrunner Elementary, Marana Unified School District
Jennie is currently the Title I school counselor at Roadrunner Elementary in the Marana Unified School District! She is passionate about not allowing students to fall through the cracks due to the struggles they have faced outside of school. Because of this, for her Wildcat Wish, Jennie received sand tray therapy tools to use in her school-wide program promoting creativity, mental health, self-expression, and emotional control within students!
