On Friday, September 21st, the Little School celebrated the International Day of Peace with a very special event. The peace rock project was the vision of Ms. Laura Gomez in response to the course, "Cultural Responsiveness in Today's Diverse Schools". Beginning a year ago, Ms. Gomez asked faculty and Little School families to collect rocks for painting. Children and families then shared words of peace in their native or ancestral languages, resulting in 25 different languages. Second through fourth graders painted and decorated the rocks, while fifth graders painted words of peace. Collectively, they painted approximately 300 rocks!
Leading up to the Day of Peace, music and physical education teachers collaborated with our librarian and our school community to prepare for this day. In Music, children learned about what makes a piece of music feel peaceful and Mr. Tatro taught the school community the song of peace entitled “Peaceful”. In physical education, children played cooperative games and Mr. Nackley engaged children in peaceful walking and movement exercises. In Library, Mrs. Maguire read books about peace to her classes and displayed them prominently in the library. Mrs. Badavas' class estimated the number of peace rocks it would take to create the community peace sign during the Peace Day celebration.
On Friday morning, the school gathered on the back field and placed the rocks class by class onto the peace sign. Members of the school community shared words, stories and song to celebrate our shared hopes and dreams while recognizing our similarities and differences. It was a lovely way to start the day.
