At my kids’ elementary school, every January attention turns to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The school, quite obviously, is not unique in this, although Lucien, my sixth grader assures me that every school across the country does what his school does, and I’m pretty sure that’s not the case, either. The first graders spend January focused upon “Great Changers.” The project, which began a few years ago, has these six and seven-year olds read, write poetry and make a portrait of a “Great Changer” Connected to that first year’s efforts, a beautiful portrait of Rosa Parks hangs in the school’s front hallway, created for the students by Richard Yarde. When I see Rosa smiling at the kids as they file in every morning (auditory complement: herd of young human elephants bearing backpacks and school bags), I like to think that investing in each person’s awareness of the world—its possibilities, its beauty, its complexity and its struggles—is a laudable, critical endeavor. With more support and calculation than the fairy tale version goes, Rosa Parks simply refused to sit at the back of the bus. And the world changed.
To me, there are stories I want kids and adults to know, about how Rosa Parks wasn’t the only person to refuse to move on back, and how strategic, impassioned people made the bus boycott happen (hint: it wasn’t a magical occurrence) and how knowing the whole story, including the hard work behind it, doesn’t take away from the awe, it may even contribute to being amazed the sea change event could be pulled off at all.
When you are in first grade at the dawn of 2010 and learning about many Great Changers, you might think, like my first grader, Remy, that an assembly about Martin Luther King Jr. is unfair. Early last week, he protested as we walked home from school: “There are so many Great Changers. Why don’t we do an assembly about each one of them?”
Good question.
That day, he was grumpy because the beloved first semester substitute music teacher was gone and the old music teacher had returned (the sub: Mister G, is a very hard act to follow). The first graders were singing This Little Light of Mine and Remy complained not just about the personnel situation (big sighing voice: “Mister G was so fun”) but also the song. Remy told me, “That song makes no sense. We don’t have lights in us.” Would that the teacher put the song in context! I tried to explain the song and to encourage he raise the Great Changer question in class, because I thought his friends and teachers might have some good ideas about that concern. (Brief aside here: part of the misery surrounding the song was the obligation to sing some of it in the school-wide assembly, a task—performing—Remy actively fears; fortunately for me, the day before the much-feared event, his close pal Kate, who’s in sixth grade, assured him this assembly is really fun—and thus, it was).
Remy also complained about his Great Changer, one we—parents and teachers alike—were sure he’d be so excited about studying, Barack Obama. This was Remy’s chief objection: “Barack Obama’s not really a Great Changer, because what has he done besides being elected President, the first African American President, but that’s not such a big deal. He did it. What is the change?”
I tried, as I often do when my kids say something that makes my jaw drop, to sit in their seat a moment. Here’s what I saw: when I was in kindergarten, Barack Obama, first African American President was elected. It was exciting. We watched it on television. Now, he’s been President for a year. What’s the big deal?
The world really looks different when you are seven than when you are a grown-up, that much is for sure—and brilliantly so.
For one thing, time is so, so different. A year, forty years, almost the same thing perhaps, but however time or fact work, when you live in a town run by a lesbian mayor and you’ve heard until you could recite the words in your sleep that everyone is worthwhile and we should not be judged by the color of our skin or who we love or how fast we run, well, you might even believe it.
Remy and I spent a whole walk to school talking about glass ceilings and people being paid different amounts for the same work and how no one thought, even two years ago, that our country would definitely elect a black man President. We thought about that great phrase Martin Luther King Jr. used about judging people not by the color of their skin but the content of their character, as we considered that women make 70 cents on a man’s dollar.
At the beginning of that walk to school, Remy noticed our next-door neighbor’s newspaper was out by the sidewalk (her house is set back a ways) and he ran the paper to her front porch, then raced back to the sidewalk. I remember thinking that’s the kind of person I hope Remy remains, a helper without being asked to help.
As adults, rightly, we want to share the magical stories and stoke the big dreams and the positive take on the world. Our school’s principal, Tim Lightman, shared his remarks from the MLK assembly with parents in the weekly bulletin. He spoke of going to hear a poet share with second graders the importance of imagination when writing poetry and of poetry “as a place where you can develop your imagination.”
The poet, Annie Boutelle, tied together Albert Einstein and Rosa Parks, as people who used their imaginations to see the world differently, to see possibilities. Tim Lightman thought back to the first day of school when he urged students to believe in the impossible, like the Queen reminded Alice in Wonderland to do. At that assembly, he asked: “If you want to believe in the impossible you have to practice. So what did she mean and why is ‘believing in the impossible’ so important? I think the Queen wanted Alice to be able to see things in new and different ways and be able to believe in new and different possibilities. I think the Queen was encouraging Alice to be a trailblazer.”
Along with a week we geared up to remember hope—Martin’s dreams, Rosa’s seat, and Barack’s election—we shuddered over and mourned the news from Haiti. Many of us couldn’t figure out what to tell our kids, let alone ourselves. The devastation that week—as Tracy Kidder wrote, in a country without a safety net—has to do not only with the event itself but really the truth of a country so bereft of resources.
Through a friend of a friend, I read this quote by Mister (Fred) Rogers yesterday (throughout my life, he’s offered the wisest counsel of practically anyone, and I’m not alone in thinking this): "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me. 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day especially in times of 'disaster', I remember my mother's words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers—so many caring people in this world."
When I try to see through my children’s eyes how to tell these stories, this is what I’m thinking about today: how I want to say there are no Great Changers without helpers. There are no Great Changes without helpers. For example, there would have been no Federal Holiday commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. without many helpers, over many years. Barack Obama would not be President without many helpers, also over many years. Somehow, I want to celebrate the helpers. What’s more, I want my kids to see being a helper is, in its way, an essential component to the kind of imagination and vision, and comfort in the world that may help us leap from the place we are to the place we can only dream to go.
