Imagine this. It’s the middle of winter and you’re currently sitting in class, and grabbing your shoulders as the cold air blows out onto you. You try to pull your short sleeves down farther, but they are already as low as they’ll go. You wish you had a sweatshirt or something other than your same old clothes to wear. If only there was a place at school dedicated to clothes for anyone to wear.

Thanks to Miss Miller, the autistic support teacher, and other Greater Latrobe faculty this dream has finally become a reality.

As of the second semester of the 2016 school year the Greater Latrobe High School has came up with a solution to this problem that is more common than you might think.

The Wildcat Wardrobe, also known as the Clothes Closet is a closet found in between rooms J2 and J4 in the junior high school. Although it’s location is in the junior high, the clothes closet is for anyone in grades 7-12.

The Wildcat Wardrobe is designed to help students in need of clothes. This can apply to multiple situations. This could be a student forgetting to dress up for a presentation or to a student who might need to get a decent amount of clothes from there.

“We have a variety of items for students in need,” Miller told us. “Sometimes it is a student who might have spilled something on their clothes or forgot to dress up for a class presentation. If that happens, they can come up and just get an item from the clothes closet.”

“It might also be somebody with a more significant need,” Miller said. “They might pick out closer to all of their wardrobe here, getting 15-20 items from the clothes closet.”  

“The Clothes Closet started in kind of two different places and then we merged it into what you see now,” Miller said, recalling the history of how the clothes closet came to be. “Mr. Schmeling and I teach a Transition Skills class where we teach students skills that they’ll need to be more independent in their living, and we were washing the same set of clothes over and over again. The kids would get irritated because they would literally wash, dry, then fold, and once they left, we would put them in the basket for them to fold and then we’d have them do it again. We decided that if we had some clothes the students could give away to students in need it would be more authentic and give them a more authentic purpose. So were in the process of cleaning out this room and Mrs. Mallory was talking with Mrs. Schmelling and they were talking about how a lot of the teachers have clothes for students in case they would spill something on them, but there were different places throughout the school where we had the clothes stored. So what we did was take their idea and what they were doing and put it together with what we were doing, and so now we have all of the clothes in the same room .”

The Clothes Closet doesn’t only have clothes though, they now carry other common accessories and necessities that students in need might need. “We’ve expanded beyond just clothes, we have bookbags, shoes, winter coats, ties, and those types of things,” Miller stated.

“Construction” for the Wildcat Wardrobe began in the second semester of the 2016-2017 school year, but it didn’t officially open until the second quarter of the 2017-2018 school year.

Now, based off the name, the Clothes Closet is located in a closet. But, Miss Miller along with many others hope for it to become much bigger and better. “Mr. Bill, our custodian has been a big help in designing the room and making it look like more like a store,” Miss Miller said.

Other teachers have also been a major help to donating items to the clothes closet. “Mrs. Mallory, Miss O’Donnell, Mrs. Massaro, Mr. and Mrs. Prady have been big supporters of the program (as have many others),”  Miller said.

“But anyone can help.” said Miller. “A lot of teachers choose to donate anonymously, just dropping off items in my room,” But this doesn’t only apply to teachers, the clothes closet will take all the help it can get, whether it be from any students or any staff who are able to donate.

If you have any old clothes (which are in good condition and still wearable), feel free to drop them off in Miss Miller’s room, room C204, in the junior high.

Miss Miller hopes that with more knowledge of the clothes closet, students can help it grow, and that it can eventually become a much more known and used resource for anyone in need at Greater Latrobe.