CHESAPEAKE — It started with the students. That’s how the Haitian relief effort at Chesapeake schools came about.

The students of Jennifer McKinney, who teaches sixth grade science at the middle school, brought up in her classroom the devastation that has racked the small Caribbean country.

“We got talking about it and saw a video on the earthquake and we talked about how we should be able to reach out to the world,” McKinney said.

Her students wanted to help and came up with a simple fundraising drive.

That grew into a special Super Bowl competition where students could buy for $1 a symbol of either the Colts or Saints teams.

Colleen Sexton, the grandmother of one of McKinney’s student, is an English teacher at Chesapeake High School. She wanted the high school to team up with the younger grades.

What they came up with was close to $1,400 from the two schools. All that money is slated to be donated to the American Red Cross’s relief efforts in Haiti.

“It blew me away,” McKinney said. “I had one kid who had $25 for his birthday. He said, ‘I don’t need anything and these kids lost everything.’ They were awesome and they want to do more and more of this.”