The Power of Children

This year for our school-wide Martin Luther King Day celebration we had “a day on” in which each class found ways to contribute in the spirit of Dr. King’s generous ways. After all of our initial hopes of this opportunity or that, we realized that most of our ideas wouldn’t work because it was a holiday and most people weren’t at work. Inspired by this realization we decided to thank those community helpers who WERE at work that day. The children wrote letters to doctors and nurses, firefighters, sanitation workers and police officers.

This is the point where I admit my own doubt. Would these pieces of paper with simple messages jotted on them really matter? I was a little apprehensive about delivering them and wondered if anyone would really care.

Well I was really wrong. People loved the notes… LOVED. As the children approached them and expressed their thanks and handed over the cards, the recipients were aglow with smiles from ear to ear. Many of them stopped what they were doing to give the children tours and engaged with them for over an hour.

With a turn of luck, we met the Chief of Police to deliver our notes.

The firefighters appreciated the recognition and thanks. 

They gave a tour of the station complete with trying on some gear.

The medical staff appreciated their notes
and took the children on a tour of the hospital.

Maybe it is my skepticism coming back into play, but I have a feeling that if I as an adult showed up with a card I had written, that I would NOT get the same response. In fact, Mauren just told me that she went with her mother once to deliver a deluxe gift basket to the firefighters full for delicious food and chocolate and were not shown the entire fire house and didn’t get to try on any gear. They got a quick and much less enthusiastic response. Why is that? It’s like a superpower that children have.

What can children do that adults can’t? What work can they (and only they) accomplish? I’ve started to take note and the more I look for it, the more I see it.

• How about last year on MLK Day in Monroe park when the preschoolers handed out crowns that said things like “You are the king of the park!” or “I love you!” or “Have a nice day, friend!” to the residents there. Pure joy for those who got paper crowns. I’m thinking those messages written on a crown from me might not have had the same magical impact.
• Remember last year when the third grade went out to give surveys about the Bus Rapid Transit and the children were able to talk to everyone and anyone. The coordinator who helped us mentioned how much more willing people were to talk to the children. They were able to get people to interact with them who otherwise wouldn’t have taken the survey.
• Then there was the time a few years ago when the Kindergartners got on the bus and rode to City Hall. Everyone on the bus, riders and driver, were so kind and patient as every single Kindergartner put their quarters of fare in the machine one… by…. one…. The Kindergarteners  got the driver to slow down and honk and wave to their friend who was at home sick as they drove past her house. People enjoyed the children so much. It's been that way every time the Kindergarten has gone out on public transportation. They went just the other day on the train and all came home with bags of Amtrak posters and buttons from the workers there. That’s never happened to me on the bus or the train. It’s kid magic.
• What about the children's drawings? They are so fresh. The little comics that the third graders make every year are so compelling in their own silly ways. And if adults try to copy children’s drawing styles it feels like a forgery, so unauthentic and posed.
• We find the same power as children explain their thinking about topics like science. Each time they write a book about their investigation, we marvel over the way they say things. The fresh but completely true ideas they can say in a way we’d never see in anywhere else on earth. “Shadows are only darkness. Grass pokes through a shadow because it is only darkness.”

The list goes on and on. I’m sure I’ll keep adding to it as I’m watching for these moments.

Then just last week we went to see a play about the life of Martin Luther King Jr. The whole play was really well done and had Mauren and myself in tears more than a few times. And the part that stood out most to us and many of the children was the part about the 1963 Birmingham Children’s March. Adults were hesitant to march because their lives and their jobs were at stake, so instead children and teens turned up to march for their rights. I’m sure you’re familiar with the stories of the children turning out to march in peaceful protest only to be met with water blasting from fire hoses and police dogs. Most were put in jail. They showed up again and again until finally the fire hoses that were ordered to spray remained stopped and the police dogs remained locked up. The children marched through.

We talked about it back in class.

Tanner: Yeah, the kids finally had the power.

Roman:That’s when most people changed their mind because they weren’t going to let the bunch of children be bit by dogs and slammed against buildings because of one person who didn’t like them and also everybody else was starting to believe that it wasn’t good to segregate people. They saw it. They put up a pretty good tantrum about it so then the police stopped and everybody stopped.

Andrea: I kept thinking about my own little kids and I kept thinking, “I don’t know if I could take them to a protest to march if I KNEW that there was a chance that they were going to get hurt while they were there…

Roman: Or arrested!

Andrea: But then each time more and more children were showing up! Why were these kids going? Why were the parents letting their kids go to something they knew might be so dangerous and hard?

Gardner: Yeah- I was thinking about that too.

Andrea: So did they make the wrong choice? Should they have stayed home?

Gardner: They were trying to just help and if they did nothing then they would just keep on living the way they were already living.

Roman: They are not safe later on.

Tanner: Not for the rest of their life! Right then they are safe, but for the rest of their life they will never be safe.

Peyton: It is sort of like to the parents, "Do you want your kids to feel like they had an impact on basically changing the world[?]"

Andrea: In a way that I don’t think adults could have.

Peyton: Right! or on the other hand, "Do you want them to feel like they helped out!?!"

Cause mostly like kids they were hurt at the same time in [segregation] too. So the adults also want them to feel like “We made a stand and said this isn’t right!” and to do it peacefully.

What amazing heroes those kids were!!

I don’t mean to suggest that any of our experiences compare to those of the children of Birmingham  during those marches, but it was an incredible illustration of the power of children to do work that adults simply cannot do.  

Bridge Building Epilogue

Project work is so different from individual work. The collaboration is at the heart of it all. We value it so much in part because of the group thinking together-- the negotiating, the disagreeing, the explaining as clearly as possible in hopes to convince the group of your idea, the willingness to change one's mind because of the ideas of the group.

At the end of the bridge project we knew that each GROUP succeeded and that each child had benefited from that process, but just how much were they really taking with them? A recent experience made a big impact on me.

As part of our reflections on the project, some children got the K'nex back out to demonstrate some of their ideas. Since I was working mostly with another group, I wasn't present for most of the building, but when walked by later on, my jaw dropped (maybe even completely to the floor).

Within minutes all of the children were completing intricate, sturdy,  streamlined structures. Some children who had held back a bit within the collaborative setting were now working on their own creations with so much facility. There were also teams of children who worked efficiently and coordinated easily about their new structure. The vocabulary flowed easily as they shared their ideas along the way, coming to consensus about how they wanted to accomplish their goals. Every single child was moving forward as a master builder.

I thought back to the first day we got out the K'nex and how labored it was to make anything. In fact I don't even know if we DID make anything. This new moment was such a contrast. It was such a manifestation of what they had acquired through the earlier work and struggle. The K'nex made it all so much more visible. The K'nex were like picture of the type of learning and connecting I know went on in other less tangible ways. If I could see a picture of their flexible thinking or their ability to communicate their ideas, I'm confident that they would impress me just as much. They would be stronger, sturdier and more complex. The children would use them with more fluency and ease. The K'nex just made it all so visible.

These types of moments help to cement my confidence in "the process".