Teachers' wishes come true at Windward Borders shop

By Treena Shapiro
Advertiser Education Writer

When Borders Express assistant manager Lori Gomes learned that a teacher had to cancel a $1,000 book order because her funding had been redirected to other school budget priorities, Gomes decided she had to do something to help.

Windward Mall Borders Express assistant manager Lori Gomes, top, has organized a book donation drive for teachers that has been so successful that Ben Parker Elementary School teacher Linda Tanaka got more materials than she asked for. Photos by Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

"Basically we tried to help everybody out," Gomes said. "I couldn't tell anybody no."

Gomes hasn't tallied the total donations yet, but she knows that more than 1,000 books were donated through what began as an attempt to help one teacher and ultimately became known as the Teacher Wish List program.

The first-time effort was unique to the Windward Mall location, but it was so successful that another is scheduled for this fall, by Borders Express stores statewide, Gomes said.

Linda Tanaka, a second-grade teacher at Ben Parker Elementary School, was thrilled when she received her books this week. She and fellow teachers Pat Kamiya and Barbara Bass got more than they had expected, or even asked for, when they put together their wish lists before the holidays.

In need of more advanced reading material for her students, Tanaka had gone down her list and filled a basket with books from Janet Adele Bloss' "Treetop Tales" series, thinking she would only get a few of them. She also chose some sing-along tapes.

When the books were delivered, she found not only everything she had selected, but classics such as "Tom Sawyer" and "Black Beauty" as well. Most of the donations came from anonymous donors.

"That people would actually spend that money on people they don't know was amazing to me," Tanaka said. Altogether the books were worth more than $200.

Initially Gomes' plan was to help the one teacher get the 120 books she had ordered, but as she discussed it with her boss, another teacher overheard and said he would like some books, too.

After that she started telling teachers about the program as they shopped in the store, and later she began visiting neighborhood schools to spread the word. Her plans to stick to Windward schools soon fell by the wayside as teachers passed along information about the program to colleagues all the way to the Wai'anae Coast.

Along the way she heard about teachers using dictionaries from 1961, teaching with damaged books, a school with a new but empty library and other stories that furthered her desire to help get books to teachers.

"Every day we have teachers coming in and buying books from their own pockets and they don't get reimbursed," Gomes said. "It's nice to be able to help."

Gomes solicited donations by putting ribbons around the requested books, along with tags indicating which teachers requested them. "We had them at the registers, on the racks, wherever we could find a spot," she said.

So when customers bought a book, they knew where it was going and that it was for a good cause.

She and her employees donated books, as well. "My employees were great about it. Some bought way more than me," she said. "We tried to fill everybody's list as much as possible."

Gomes noticed that some schools were needier than others, asking simply for dictionaries and thesauruses for their classes, but they don't need those basic reference books anymore.

"Pretty much everybody that needed a class set got it," she said.

The project meant more than new books for the kids, Gomes said. "It teaches the kids that people care about them and that's a cool thing, too."

Reach Treena Shapiro at tshapiro@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8014.