How much is a million? This question was posed to me and my fellow elementary school buddies many moons ago. Our teacher asked, “How many of you can count to 1 million?” All of our hands went confidently up. So, we started. Turns out a million is a lot of counting.

The project began in response to a harsh letter to the editor in our local small-town newspaper. It suggested that public education was dumbing down students. What would happen when we all grew up and were not able to function in real life?

Mrs. Lewinski didn’t find this humorous. My fourth grade teacher squared her shoulders and announced that we were going to collect 1 million bottle caps. We would bring them to school every day and count together until we reached 1 million.

Everywhere in town you could see kids, parents and interested individuals eagerly looking in every gutter, alley, parking lot and corner for bottle caps. Soon our classroom was filled with refrigerator boxes full of bottle caps. They ringed the classroom. Stores began delivering washing machine boxes, furniture boxes, anything that would hold bottle caps. The halls were lined, and other classrooms were fitting in what they could.

Dad and I would do our bottle cap prowl every evening when he got home from work. But soon, it was clear that there were no more bottle caps to be found. What to do? Dad called all of the local bars and asked them to hold all of the bottle caps for our class. Others called every business they could think of that could possibly help. Eventually Coca-Cola heard about the project and sent unused bottle caps to help with our project.

Our local newspaper began running stories on how it was going and how many we had counted to date. Photographers were showing up in our classroom to take pictures of the children who were counting to 1 million.

The impact was significant. Our school, teacher and class were famous. The project was deemed brilliant and the counters as young leaders. Getting to 1 million was now a community goal.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but Mrs. Lewinski was engaging in public relations. She was actively taking on the notion that public education was letting children down. The cherry on top was when the original letter to the editor writer visited our classroom to see what all of the commotion was about. She was very impressed and had her picture taken with us. The photo was then submitted to the newspaper, thus leveraging the story even further. The local Coca-Cola distributor used us in their ads to promote how they support the community.

Did we get to 1 million? Nope. Turns out that’s a lot of bottle caps! But, we did count hundreds of thousands. And what happened to the bottle caps when we were done? Some were taken by local artists to work with, some were kept at the school, a few were taken by the museum.

To this day, I can’t see a bottle cap without thinking about the innovative way Mrs. Lewinski came up with to teach us not only how to count to a million but also perseverance and pride in a job well done. She drew the entire community together. And that is PR at its finest.

I didn’t know at that time that I would become a public relations professional. But, I was fortunate to experience true public relations organized at the grass roots level. I don’t think anyone dared to question our education system for quite some time after that!

Stacy Cornay is the owner of Communication Concepts Public Relations & Advertising. She may be reached at 303-638-7127; comm-concepts.com">scornay@comm-concepts.com; comm-concepts.com; Facebook.com/Communication Concepts; X @CommConceptsPR; or Linked In.