Writers Lab: The Peace Builders Pledge
the surprises of writing with young people, and your assignment
I snapped this photo from inside my car at 6am on Sunday as the guys waved me off on a road trip to the Washington, DC area where I’ve been all week, working in Title 1 schools with students in grades K through 5 and their teachers, writing and reading and telling stories together.
We have encountered the folly of “best laid plans” every day, even though the planning was meticulous. The wrong sound system, the wonky microphone, the screen that won’t talk to the laptop, the screen that isn’t big enough for everyone to see, the messages that go missing so that kids bring notebooks to a multi-grade assembly and 400 kids with notebooks and clacking pencils in one fell-swoop is too many kids and notebooks for a writing workshop, especially when one group that troops into that assembly is from pre-school.
hahahahaha. I’m laughing, because we got to laughing about all this at dinner the first night, and nearly fell off our chairs recounting all the snafus — how were we still standing? And how did we manage to pull it off anyway? (hint: excellent punting skills and lots of experience.)
On the first day alone, one child in the back of an assembly vomited, and one near the front missed his bathroom opportunity. The intrepid organizers and an occasional (also excellent) techie performed a Katzenjammer Kids routine in the middle of an aisle in a room full of cafeteria tables and kids and notebooks.
They finagled the sound — switching out (and moving! they were heavy!) speakers and cords and mics and what-nots, from the back of the room to the front, in some insane-looking frenetic ballet, mid-room, trailing cords everywhere, while the author (that would be me) kept going, walking past the fixers, back and forth, talking all the way, and taking a new mic handed to her every few minutes, like it was “nothing to see here!” and asking the assemblage, “Is this better?” and just kept going. I mean, we were on a tight schedule, and there were 400 kids in that room. omg, I’m laughing again just picturing it.
Someone very helpful (really) with the faltering sound in an assembly the next day had to finagle the settings on the laptop so two screens would talk to each other (and not the laptop screen) which inadvertently shifted the PowerPoint slides for Freedom Summer, the book I always end with for grades 3 through 5. I could see the slides weren’t corresponding with my memorized reading, so I stopped clicking through and kept right on “reading” the book while I calmly walked to the computer and fixed the slides.
The usual, right? It really is. When you’ve got this many schools and this many students and teachers and staff, this much movement and a marshalled schedule, it goes beyond “it takes a village.” It’s a beaches-of-Normandy type planning event. Once things settle, and they do, lots of learning takes place (for alll of us, lol). And it has been a fabulous week. Fabulous teachers, fabulous students, fabulous administrative staff (and this week has seen me fall in love with principals again, go figure), and fabulous work we’ve done together.
As I said in a Note, it has been a week of surprises, and none more so than the “unicorn” Title 1 school (the principal’s word for her school) of amazement I encountered this afternoon. I end workshops and assemblies by citing my mantra that every human being is worthy of dignity and respect, and every person’s story is important, that it’s hard to hate someone when you know their story.
I tell young writers that we ARE stories, and that it’s so important to listen to others tell their stories, and to tell/write/draw/dance/sing our stories, too, because that is the way we create peace… peace… on… earth, I say, with great sincerity and finality and assurance that I know something.
When I told the assembled K-2s, at the end of our time together today, that telling our stories is the way we create peace, the principal added, “We say a Peace Pledge every morning after the Pledge of Allegiance.” I said, “Really? I’d love to hear it.”
And, I kid you not, as if I’d asked them to (and I guess I did!), every child dutifully stood up, en masse, like an event that had been rehearsed. They each held up two fingers on one hand with the universal sign for piece, and began the pledge along with the principal and every teacher. All those young faces! All those sincere words, spoken so strongly, steadily, in unison and solidarity. All that hope for the future:
The Peace Builders Pledge is not unique to this school, but they did tweak it to reflect their school in particular. I teared up with surprise at being so “in country” in such a call-and-response way. I was also exhausted, but that’s another story. :> Here I have talked so often, and for so many years, about creating peace, and I find myself smack-dab in the middle of the Peace Builders.
Which brings me to this week’s Lab Assignment, and a funny story about Claude Thompson Elementary’s Peace Pledge that goes with the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. Don your Lab Coats, your Dusters, your aprons, your Chore Coats, your fuzzy blankets, whatever suits you. Sharpen your pencils, turn to a fresh page in your notebook, good luck, and happy writing!
If you’d like to join us in the Lab, here’s your button to do that:
THE ASSIGNMENT: