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DKG Practice/Program

Helping Members to See the

Impact of SEE

by Lori Richardson Morphew

In June 2024, I used Lego blocks to represent the hours and
donations that the members of Oklahoma State Organization
donated toward the Support for Early-career Educators (SEE)
project. This strategy is shared here as just one way to help
members realize and visualize the impact of their efforts in
SEE.
As the first vice president of the state organization, one of
my tasks was to gather the SEE information from the chapter
presidents. Consequently, I emailed two forms to the chapter
presidents to keep track of their dollars and hours, respectively.
Oklahoma currently has 25 chapters with 410 members. As the
reports were submitted, the numbers for support of SEE started
to climb.
The goal of the international project of SEE is to assist
young educators over the 7-year hump—to avoid risking the
loss of another educator. Wanting to give the members a visual
representation at the state organization’s conference, I saw Jo Yandell and Dacia Hudelson help
create the Lego visual for SEE as
Legos as building blocks—representing veteran teachers as a Lori Richardson Morphew shares the
solid foundation of help for our early educators. So, that sealed statistics!
it…Legos would be the visual representation.

Donations
In preparation for the display, I did two things. First, I counted out Legos to match the dollars or hours
donated—using a 1 to 10 ratio. For example, for a monetary donation of $2,900, I literally counted out
290 Legos and put them in a bag. Next, I divided the donations into categories so that
the totals would be more manageable amounts. Those categories were monetary
donations, gift cards, books, teaching materials, and, finally, other.
Monetary donations: Some chapters provided monies to buy student
incentives such as pencils or stickers. One chapter donated funds
to provide needed clothing items. Chapters throughout the
state organization blessed the SEE recipients with $2,900
this year—which included just 10 months,
translating to $290 a month.
Gift Cards: I found several
chapters donated gift cards. One
chapter in northern Oklahoma,
Delta, provided
these cards to use
a t at a school’s Book
Fair. This way,
the teachers could

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