Colonial Day

THE TRADITION in our elementary school’s fifth grade is to put on a big Colonial Day each year.  The Boss has reached this much-anticipated milestone, and as his parents, so have we. Our son has an acting role – he will be a British soldier at the Boston Massacre – and the whole class will learn about crafts, activities, food, and everyday life in our country’s colonial days by visiting a “village” erected in the school’s gym.

Guess who erects the village, demonstrates the crafts, cooks the food, sews the costumes, and sets it all up and then tears it down and puts it away after it’s all over?

The parents do! And some teachers, and some other good folks from the neighborhood, but mostly, the parents of this year’s fifth graders.

And thus, we are earning our Good Mom Badges and Good Dad Points by Volunteering to Help. Dad was in the gym last night, setting up the village “shops” (mostly, the apothecary and the blacksmith).  In a little while, I’m going over to help with the “decorations.” And then later tonight and early tomorrow morning, I am going into fire up my griddle and churn out 4 or 5 batches of Johnny Cakes, to be served with apple butter (which is really hard to buy at the grocery store when you grow up eating homemade apple butter cooked in giant iron kettles).

This is a rite of passage for both the parents and the children, and I have found myself thinking a lot about the big hands-on educational experience from when I was my son’s age: THE MEXICAN FIESTA!

Ole!

Yep, that’s me, about 30 years ago. (!!) I’m sure my mom must have sewed the skirt and shawl for me, and I remember thinking I looked really cute in that choker with the red flower. We transformed our classroom with colorful blankets and giant sombreros, made more God’s Eyes than you could shake a twig at, danced the Mexican Hat Dance, and stuck reams of tissue paper on I-don’t-know-how-many pinatas. And, of course, there was Mexican cuisine, all made by the parents. (This may explain my affinity for Baja Fresh.)

The whole shebang was designed to help us learn more about our neighbors south of the border. (Also in the same World Studies textbook: Canada, our neighbors to the north! But of the two, nothing says “party!” like a big Mexican fiesta. Sorry, Saskatchewan.) And Colonial Day will give our children a taste of life in early America. Or at least, we hope so.  In the spring, they take an field trip to Colonial Williamsburg, VA, which will certainly reinforce what we’re trying to do in the school gymnasium. Also, it’s an overnight, so of course the parents! kids are really looking forward to that.

So, as history repeats itself, I’m ready to dig in and do my part so my son can enjoy this big event, and maybe learn something, too.  And in seven more years, I’ll have the chance to do it all over again for The Peezer, and please don’t even ask me to think about how old I’ll be then. 

No more teachers’ dirty looks… EVER again at this school.

I was wasting time exploring new blogs today and came upon this gem, Sweet Juniper, featured on Suz Broughton’s blogroll. I was thinking.. Sweet Juniper? Might this blog have something to do with… GIN?? But today’s post over there had nothing to do with my favorite spirit. In fact, it was a riveting post about a shuttered school in Detroit, and the bloggers tell a poignant story about this once-vibrant building, now totally trashed by vandals and stripped to its core by looters:

Jane Cooper Elementary was once considered a good school. But so many questions remain. When was it built? Who was Jane Cooper? How many kids passed through its halls from the 1920s until the building was abandoned? The only other mentions of the school in the recent press are the accounts of its closing in 2007.

You read that correctly: the last year of classes at Jane Cooper Elementary was 2006-7. After that, the cash-strapped Detroit Public Schools shut the school down. All the damage in the photographs I took occurred in just a little over one year.

The photos that accompanies the story really grabbed me, and when you consider that this school has only been non-operational for ONE YEAR, it makes them all the more amazing. I admit I don’t know much about Detroit, and I’m sure there’s plenty to be proud about there, but this post just made me… well, sad for that city.

There are school problems in Washington, DC too. The student population has dwindled, and a new chancellor is trying hard to right the ship. This year, a number of schools closed and students were reassigned to other schools. I am sure it’s difficult anytime your neighborhood school closes. Children have to readjust to new teachers, to travelling outside of their world to access education. The school ceases to function as a focal point in the community. It stops being the glue.

Our own elementary school in our idyllinc suburb is fantastic. I simply can’t imagine what our lives would be like if it stopped operating. But the thing I cannot imagine is people – hoodlums? criminals? – going into the building and stripping it to its core, throwing books and school supplies with complete disregard all over the place and wrecking the building.

My own elementary school was actually the same building in which my parents went to junior high school.  There were years and years of history there. It was razed after I left town to make room for an addition to the “new” (from the Eisenhower era) high school.  But every once in a while, I still think about it. I walk down its hallway in my mind, picturing where each teacher’s classroom was. I can conjur its smell, see the shellacked wooden floors and the large windows.  That building is part of my subconscious.

I have (mostly) happy memories from my years there, and know it was deliberately taken down for the greater good – so that the rest of the school could expand to meet the needs of its students. Just imagine how the children of Jane Cooper Elementary school must feel, knowing that their school building has been disrespected by ne’er-do-wells who likely had no connection to the school?

I am unable to wrap my arms around it.

Head on over and check out their post.  View the photos.  Then come back and let’s chat about it.