Witness to Our Kids' Success

Today, I had the opportunity to visit my daughter's first-grade classroom at the Stratton Elementary School and to witness firsthand the great success we are having in giving our kids an early start in reading and writing.

Throughout this school year, my wife has volunteered to help out with Writers' Workshop, assisting children to develop their writing skills. Due to a scheduling conflict, I offered to take her place, and I am very happy that I did.

In Writers' Workshop, kids are asked to write a 3-6 page book on any topic and to illustrate it. I worked with four different children at different paces, and I was absolutely amazed by what I saw. These kids were really expressing themselves and their ideas! What a far cry from my own days in first grade, when we were pretty much stuck on "Dick and Jane" workbooks and block letter penmanship.

The kids I worked with wrote about their Disney vacations, their trips to the Boys and Girls Club to pick out a Christmas tree, or how a visiting dog woke up their family by howling in the middle of the night.

A few children were asked to read their books to the class, and the other kids were encouraged to comment or ask questions. One little boy read about his two pet fish and how they died when he emigrated to the United States from China. Kids being kids, a lot of the other children's questions revolved around how the fish died, whether they floated or sank, what he did with their bodies, etc., etc. The teacher deftly moved the subject along, but the questions put on full display the matter-of-fact innocence and curiosity of the youngsters.

I was very proud when my own daughter read her own autobiography outlining her nearly seven years on this Earth. She wrote about how her first word was "flag." (Savannah was born in 2001, and she was just learning to talk at the time of 9/11.) And nothing could be more rewarding than hearing her exclaim on the last page of her little book, "I love life."

What more could a parent ask for?

-- Joe