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St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Lee Enterprises

Sunday, July 12, 2009 9:54 PM CDT
Teacher raising money for cancer research

By DAVE FOPAY, Staff Writer
dfopay@jg-tc.com

CHARLESTON — Demonstrating the character traits she tries to teach her students is a big reason why Roxanne Cornebise wants to walk 60 miles over three days next month.

Cornebise is a counselor at Jefferson Elementary School in Charleston and also teaches the school’s character education program.

She said she wants to show how people can help others by participating in the Susan G. Komen “Walk for the Cure” in Chicago from Aug. 7-9. The walk will take place in Chicago’s Grant Park and participants walk 20 miles each day and sleep in tents at the site in between the walks.

“If I’m going to teach this, I need to be doing it,” Cornebise said. She added that she also decided to participate because of a history of breast cancer in the women in her family.

But as she wants to help others, Cornebise needs help herself, since so far she’s raised about $950 but needs to have at least $2,300 to be able to take part in the walk. She said she’s mostly asked friends, relatives and co-workers for donations but now is asking for the help from the public.

Donations can be made online at the event’s Web site, www.the3day.org, and clicking on the donations link. Donors should search for Cornebise’s name under participants to get to her page, where they can make a donation securely and get a receipt for tax purposes, she said.

Cornebise said she can accept donations up until the time she finishes the walk but she’d like to have her money raised by at least the day before the event starts.

The character education program at Jefferson focuses on traits that teachers and students decide to encourage, such as honesty, responsibility or respect for others. The students then organize projects to demonstrate those traits, and past efforts have included sending packages to troops serving overseas and conducting a mock election.

Cornebise said she hopes that taking part in the walk will be something to show her students and help them know what it means to actually carry out what the program tries to teach them.

“A person is always more credible when they can speak from experience and offer real-life examples of situations in which they have participated,” she said.

She admitted that the distance she’ll have to walk during the event is “out of my comfort zone” but she received a training schedule and has been preparing since early May.

Cornebise said she’s heard that the walk can be a “life-changing experience” for participants, who get to walk alongside cancer survivors and others who are all there for the same reason. All the money donated goes to cancer research, she noted.

Contact Dave Fopay at dfopay@jg-tc.com or 238-6858.

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