A boy of action

After complaining almost daily for months about a gross injustice he faces at school (taking away recess time from everyone as a punishment for a few kids being loud at lunch), Jay finally took my advice and wrote an impressive letter to the principal last night:

To Mrs. Hernandez

I am Jay White. I am going to tell you about the Geneva Convention. It is a war crime to punish a group for the actions of a few and this exact thing is happening to me. The paras/lunch teachers make it so third grade has to line up during recess, minimizing the amount of time we have to play because part of third grade is noisy in the cafeteria. This stratagy has not made any changes to the noise level in the cafeteria. Once the lunch teachers said "you don't want to ruin it for everywon." I think kids need to play outside to get energy out. Also making us line up ruins some people's Fuel Up to Play 60's.* Please tell the lunch teachers to stop making us line up.

Yours in education, 

Jay White

*Fuel Up to Play 60 is a program the school is participating in which promotes active healthy kids (eat healthy, be active).

Jay wrote this entire letter all on his own, after numerous conversations spanning the entire school year about the injustices of "lining up." He dreads going to school on days where his class already "owes time" during recess from being noisy the day before. He comes home dragging his feet, announcing in a subdued voice the latest number of "minutes owed." A few months ago when he started complaining about this, I told him to write a letter to the principal. Every time he complained about lining up since then, I have told him to stop complaining and ACT! Try to make a change! The endless circumlocution about unjust punishment was driving me crazy. The injustice of depriving kids of what little recess time they are given completely rubbed all of us the wrong way too. How could any modern educator, para professional or full fledged teacher, not know/understand the value of recess? That's probably my number one problem with schools: the minuscule amount of recess time (30 minutes per day, divided into two segments at our kids' current school). As much as I wanted to storm into the school and demand an explanation and swift action (plus the addition of at least two more recesses for everyone), I held it in, encouraged Jay to take this on, and waited out his initial reluctance for three months.

Yesterday Jay came home and glumly stated "third grade owes the entire recess tomorrow."  That tipped him over the edge at last and he sat down to compose the letter after dinner. A few weeks ago when Jay was explaining "lining up" to Jeff, Jeff mentioned that it reminded him of the Geneva Convention and of course Jay asked every single follow-up question, soaking in the comparison to war crimes with relish. When Jay read us his completed letter, Jeff and I were super impressed with his persuasive writing and use of quality language. We gave him all of the appropriate compliments, and the boy was glowing with pleasure as he carefully folded his letter into an envelope. He hand delivered the letter to the front office on his way into school this morning.

I waited with bated breath all day for Jay to get home from school this afternoon. When he walked in the door, I immediately peppered him with questions about how it went. Jay reported that the principal liked his letter and she left a note on his desk requesting a meeting with him during school. During their meeting, she complimented Jay's writing and ideas and promised to talk with the teachers involved. Jay then casually "gave her some suggestions" as he phrased it, on alternative ways to handle the situation. The boy is fearless! We joked with him that he was leading a recess revolution, to which he replied "I'm more of a peaceful revolutionary."