Anna's Class Notes

 We are back!

We had a fantastic week back at school in person! The children were so happy to see each other, and I was overjoyed to see them. We made the best of distance learning, but the happiness and energy of being together again was quite palpable. It had been a while since we were in our room, and we revisited our classroom agreements, especially focusing on keeping each other safe. We remembered why we must wear our masks correctly and wash our hands, and how important it is to help our friends remember these important safety measures. We also revisited our agreement to be kind to one another. It was a good opportunity to do this as we welcomed Bette, the newest addition to our class.   

We have settled back into our school routines and I was very impressed with how smoothly the class was able to adjust to in-person learning. My personal resolution in 2021 is to get more exercise, so as a way to make sure the children get plenty of breaks from working at desks wearing their masks, I have incorporated some “hikes” around the field in between our academic work time. I am finding that a few sprints across the field in between reading and writing are helping extend the children’s ability to focus. 

This week we read I Am Martin Luther King Jr., by Brad Meltzer. Some of the questions that came up had to do with when the events in the story took place and how much has changed or not changed since that time. We also read a book called Separate is Never Equal, by Duncan Tonatiuh. This book tells the true story of Sylvia Mendez, a Mexican American child whose family fought for her to attend her local school in Southern California in the 1940s. At that time, many children were forced to attend a “Mexican School” which was greatly inferior to the schools available to white children who lived in the same neighborhoods. We compared the struggles of Sylvia Mendez and the thousands of people who participated in the fight to integrate the schools in California to the fight for civil rights in the 1960s that is described in Brad Meltzer’s book about MLK Jr. One observation was that in both cases many, many people participated in these struggles. 

In other news, one of the large trees in the grove outside our classroom fell down a day or two before we came back to school. After consulting with a tree expert (Kent, Annabelle’s dad), it seems like the tree should not be replanted. It is now part of our play landscape. The children have been enjoying digging in the hole left by the tree’s roots system, which is also now visible. There is a lot to observe and learn about the tree by seeing the part of its structure that was hidden from our view before. We are hoping to plant a tree to replace the one that fell, stay tuned for more on that!