Being creative about friendship

1968 is a long time ago even for those of us who were alive in that year (I was 7). So you could only imagine how far away it is for the roughly 30 second-graders being taught by MaryEllen Bighi and Anita Brites at the Lawrence Primary School at the Number Two School in Inwood.

Three days before the nation celebrated the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday (which is Jan. 15), the students joined together last Friday with their teachers to celebrate the words, wisdom and actions of the slain civil rights leader (April 4, 1968). 

Beginning with a song, the children learned about Martin and then as Brites narrated she showed them photographs of King and that time period. The kids shouted out answers to her questions and agreed in unison on the words they used.

Using five creative friendship stations, Bighi and Brites went about stressing what makes a friendship and how people could be better friends. There was the friendship fruit salad. “We have to work hard to stay a friend,” Bighi told the students, who listed attentively and watched her place a variety of fruit into a circular bowl. Peaches for being warm and fuzzy, pears to show we share and apples for friends who stay strong. The kids weren’t enamored of Bighi’s choice of marshmallows, but weren’t upset when the yogurt when into the salad.

Brites mixed the salad as the kids voiced their one-word opinions on what they see when they looked at their peers. “Nice, friendly, kind, sharing, happy, respectful, peaceful and mindful,” were the words they said. 

“I know that he said he had a dream and he changed the law,” said Sebastian Vega, 7. “He needed help to change the law, but he got it and then he did it.”

The children then rotated through the five friendship stations having some fruit salad, coloring and making a crown that read honest, helpful, be kind, happy, and funny; making a bracelet for each other, making a necklace and a coloring a bookmark.

Valeria Arevlo, 7, learned a lot about King and said that all the activities were fun. “His dream was love,” she said. 

Maybe 1968 isn’t so long ago after all.