- Kindergarten students using their pre-reading skills and understanding of geometric design to develop illustrated books for families with preschool-age children.
- Eleven- and 12-year-old students using their collective knowledge about science, ecology, and habitats to protect wildlife at their local park.
- Middle school students using what they learned in English and social studies to write plays about the history of their town. Those plays have become part of the collection in the local library.
- Secondary students working on a range of graduation projects, including increasing the participation in the U.S. Census in their town, increasing AIDS awareness in their state, and seeking ways to reduce economic and racial stratification in their neighborhoods.
[Transcript of audio clip featuring Carl Glickman.]
[Transcript of audio clip featuring Carl Glickman.]
When you would walk into any one of these high schools, middle, junior highs, elementary or primary schools, they would have some type of ceremonial activity that has been going on forever.
So, in one school, homeroom always begins with a morning circle—it began 27 years before. In another school, a middle school, the morning begins with the membership of the school in a large, open space where students demonstrate their learning to the rest of the school. In another school, they start the morning with a typical morning, but they have their own school song. And the school song—each generation of students adds verses to the song that they originally had. So this one school that I looked at now has five different versions of the same song, but it is this idea of this continuity that I don’t often see in most schools that I visit.
In one elementary school—this was a stunner—you walk in and the first thing you see is this quilt that was done by the first graduating class of students decades before. In that first historic year, working with teachers and parents, each student stitched into the quilt their own patch describing the connection of the school to its community. You see patches of barn raisings, fresh rivers flowing with fish, new industries being created, and small farms flourishing. Also on the quilt are patches that show the first schoolhouse for white students and a separate one for black students. There are patches depicting scenes of great turbulence during court-ordered integration. There are patches of various community leaders of Native American ancestors and scenes of great conflict in reconciliation. Each patch has the signature of the student. Each patch down the wall leaves space for the next group of students to add their patches. So you see the aisles in the hallways of decades of work—of students expressing the connection of their school to their community.