Nina Joines, Tulsa Oklahoma

How to cultivate learning that lasts for a lifetime.

How do you encourage students to give back? Some teachers organize fundraising events for their classrooms throughout the year, as a way of giving back to the community. One student collected shoes for the needy, and turned it into an annual giving project.

No matter what your classroom size is, you can create a giving project that changes your students lives, forever.

When home school mom Tammy Kling first started taking her kids to feed the homeless, she had no idea how it would transform them into boys with serving hearts.  "Now everything they do has others in mind. At Thanksgiving, their first thought is setting a table for the homeless, or inviting them to our home. When it's raining, they wonder about the homeless family that has to sleep under a bridge."

Today, Tammy teaches a writers workshop to the homeless that provides the life skills that can transform their thinking, help them create winning resumes, and land that job or second chance they need to get back on their feet. Sometimes she recruits high school or college students to join in and help teach in order to encourage giving back.

"Organizations and web based resources like Learners online are invaluable," Tammy says, "because that's all a homeless person has most of the time, is access to online resources at the library. It's not like they can go buy an expensive curriculum, or a computer. They just don't have the resources. But it's the online learning that can help change their life."

Anyone can give back. Any teacher, any student and any classroom. What will you do in 2013?