Holiday Magic

Stories of serendipity and selflessness remind us why this is the most wonderful time of the year

Real Live Elves

When local kids needed more than toys, strangers started checking off Santa's list

BY Derek Burnett

FOR YEARS, JESSIE the Elf had been a holiday fixture in Stephanie Levinson's pre-K classroom at San Fernando Elementary School in Los Angeles County. A veteran teacher in a severely disadvantaged neighborhood, Levinson knew that her young students had it rough-some were homeless, many were in foster care, others were crammed into garages or single rooms with eight to 10 other family members-so she made sure that Jessie, the class's Elf on the Shelf, was good to them every holiday season.

It was hard to do on a teacher's salary, but from the post-Thanksgiving return until the Christmas break, every day Jessie managed to bring the kids some little token of holiday magic a pack of crayons, a pencil, something. No matter how small the gift, her students were always grateful.

And there was a good chance it would outshine whatever their families could afford to give them. Despite being surrounded by wealthy neighborhoods, their community was so poor that when it rained, kids came to school wearing trash bags. Some didn't brush their teeth because they didn't own a toothbrush.

Then the pandemic hit and the district switched to online learning.

Zoom opened the educators' eyes to many other physical hardships their students faced. For Levinson and her colleagues, it was a peek behind the curtains into their students' home lives and what they saw broke the teachers' hearts.

One kindergartner spent her daily six hours of Zoom hunkered at the back of a mini-mart while her father worked. Others attended virtual class from motel rooms where their families were temporarily sheltering. On screen, some students had several siblings in the background, all sharing one bed and doing online school for various grades.