Friday message

Friends,

Jonathan and I spent the day with your children today. Personally, I went to see an author speak last night at Hallet, the famed Jaqueline Woodson. I left her talk invigorated and inspired. Last night, I reread Brown Girl Dreaming and brought back a piece of the story to share with the class. I also decided to share one of her picture books titled, Each Kindness. The story centers around Maya, who is new to a school and is ostracized by other children because of her clothing. The children are incredibly unkind to her because of her differences. One day, the teacher gives a lesson about kindness by bringing a bowl with water and has each student think of a kind act as they dropped a small stone into the water and watched the ripples spread outward. Chloe is stung by the lost opportunity for friendship, and thinks about how much better it could have been if she'd shown a little kindness toward Maya. The story ends and the reader is left to imagine what transpires. For writing, students were to take the perspective of Maya or Chloe and write an ending to the story. The book reminded me of a quote from last week from Mother Theresa; I alone cannot change the world but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples. Many students made connections to the story of One Hundred Dresses, which many read last year with Meg. We discussed the tendency for people to sometimes join in when friends are being unkind and how we can avoid doing so. We talked about how to stand up for what it right, for being kind to others, even if it is not popular or in line with others.

We started the morning routine with sharing about Jaqueline Woodson and talking about some of her books. We then discussed the quote of the day from Buddha; If you propose to speak, always ask yourself, it is necessary, is it true and is it kind? Our words have power and they can either bring light to the world or hurt and despair. We returned to this premise several times in our day.

The word of the day is affinity and we discovered we share many affinities for many things. For mathematics, we engaged in work with True or False fractions and then continued new math rotations. The room was full of excitement as kids continued work on rovers. Later this afternoon, we celebrated collaboration with some choice time with Brain Games. 

After, we had a speaker come to talk with children about Wolves. This was a lovely culmination of the Wolf unit and everyone walked away with new wonderings and knowledge about this beautiful animal. 

We had so many students give their best thinking and learning today. Willa, Illana, Micah, Quinn, Everett, Naomi, Raul, Zoe Cummings, and Keira set beautiful examples for others. In fact, Jonathan said the entire class had an outstanding afternoon. 

Wishing you a peaceful and restful three day weekend.