Lessons

I thought you might be interested in how some creative teachers in my neck of the woods seized an excellent opportunity to give their students a little lesson in citizenship:

Sometimes the best life lessons come from unexpected sources. When Erin Peabody, NSSED speech and language pathologist, learned that her husband, Todd, was being deployed by the U.S. Navy to Kuwait, she didn’t realize that his assignment would generate an unparalleled learning experience not only for the 13 four to six-year-olds in Abbie London’s classroom, but their teaching staff and even the children’s families.

“Abbie and I decided it would be a great opportunity to expose our students to concepts of military service and good citizenship,” Peabody said. “This also made it possible for me to be in a good place about my husband’s deployment. It allowed me to interact with him through the children in a very positive, fun
way.”

The class at South Park School is a blended class of children with special needs and regularly developing children. Peabody’s husband provided the basis for a class citizenship project that expanded to include the meaning of community and friendship as well.

The servicemen loved it. The project began with the children sending letters to Peabody’s husband and a friend of his who was also deployed from the Great Lakes Naval Base. Then another corpsman from Washington, who was working with them, asked to be included in the project. All three men loved sending letters to the children and getting mail from them. Soon parents were contributing to the packages, providing everything from cookies, books and clothing to a parent-created videotape of the children singing songs and telling what they had learned about Kuwait.

“We didn’t approach it from the perspective of war and the bad things that are going on in the Middle East,” Peabody explained. “We talked about how my husband and the others were over there helping people who were sick and injured. It was a great opportunity for the students to grow, and it was amazing how
they really embraced the project.”

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