By Lauren Goldberg
From the Foote School Mission Statement: "Our community values each child, appreciates differences and challenges prejudice."
From the school's Diversity Statement: "Our teachers create inclusive classrooms that foster respect for differences, break down stereotypes and support each student’s individual identity, giving children a sense of belonging."
These intentions are at the heart of teaching and learning at Foote every day. It is fitting, however, to highlight some recent examples, as we prepare for an all-school assembly honoring the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and to take our places as people who can help the world.
Ashley Schnabel’s third graders are expanding their note-taking and non-fiction comprehension skills in reading groups by identifying and summarizing important details from biographies. Around a table, Ashley and six children examine a book about Dr. King. The focus alternates between specific skill instruction in language arts and major events in Dr. King’s life.
“Listen to this clue," Ashley says, as she re-reads the line, "Something happened that changed U.S. history." Pointing to the sentence, she says, "When we hear or read something like this, the author is telling us that something important is coming up." The children finish reading the section, which deals with the Montgomery bus boycotts, prompting Ashley to open a larger conversation. “What do you think the author means by the statement ‘peaceful protest can be dangerous’?"
Eighth graders are also reading biographies of Dr. King, albeit more in-depth versions. Susan Neitlich's class is preparing careful summaries of full chapters about the people and events of the Civil Rights movement. A lively discussion ensues about efforts to integrate schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. For these teenagers, the idea that peaceful protest can be dangerous is presented in a much more confrontational episode. The eighth graders are also memorizing individual lines from King's "I Have a Dream" speech, which they will recite in a powerful presentation during our assembly next Friday, January 26.
While the national holiday honors one man, our understanding of his legacy is bound to a larger, global narrative about the power of an individual to make a difference. With that concept as a focus, Cara Hames’ and Susie Grimes’ second graders are studying the stories of four people—Malala Yousafzai, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg—to understand the ways one person can make the world better for others. Again, language arts skills are central to the unit: identifying details and examples, retelling the material accurately, and interpreting the author's purpose.
For their part, fourth graders are engaged in year two of a buddy program with elderly residents at Whitney Center in Hamden. On Tuesday, students visited their friends, bringing questionnaires to guide conversations about acts of kindness and ways that people can make a difference in the world. The seniors shared personal anecdotes as well as wisdom they have gained through their lives.
Blending important skills with meaningful content is a hallmark of our instructional practice. Each of the lessons described here is a regular part of Foote's curriculum, regardless of national holidays. This month, however, we are adding a bit more emphasis to the connections between content and purpose, which we will showcase in our MLK assembly.
Many teachers have used the content of their classes to launch discussions and prompt ideas for students to record their own intentions for acts of kindness. In preparation for the assembly, every person at Foote—students, faculty and staff—are writing intentions in strips of colored paper, which will be fastened into a long chain of kindness and goodwill in the gym.
In his 1966 essay "Nonviolence: The Only Road to Freedom," Dr. King wrote, "Only a refusal to hate or kill can put an end to the chain of violence in the world and lead us toward a community where men can live together without fear. Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives." May our chain be one of unity, love, and joy—a series of links in a beloved community.
Lauren Goldberg is Foote's curriculum coordinator.