March 31, 2004

This morning, Jack's class had a publishing party. Every couple of months, we are invited to his classroom (Patti can't go as the 4th graders are on the 4th floor and the school has no elevators) to share pieces of writing on which they have been working hard for weeks. They polish them carefully, then write them out in their best cursive.
This time, the assignment had been non-fiction picture books and they had been researching them since Christmas. Jack had been playing his cards fairly close to the vest so I was surprised to see that they had made full color 24 page, hard bound books. They were amazing. Jack's topic was raccoons and he had little color swatches of the colors they come in, drawings of raccoons hands washing fishes, a really detailed index, the whole thing dedicated to all the raccoons in the world.
Six months into the school year, the class room is a riot of creativity. One wall is lined with crayon self portraits, another of drawings of colonial villagers. The children have drawn their own versions of the covers of the books they have read as a class and there are math charts and lists and a laundry line running diagonally across the room a dangle with drawings and finished assignments. Books are on display along the window sills, there are boxes of art supplies and patches of colored carpet and winding throughout, the tangle of ten year olds, humming with energy.
It's small wonder they get so much done, have so many ideas, create so much in this environment versus the bleak, grey, faceless cubicles of the office.