Handle with Care

Rains came this early morning- for hours. While it was a dreary and cooler morning, warmth radiated from the gratitude and unity of the schools connected through CIH, and the celebration drawing closer. Davi Vida spoke of the physical preparations being nearly complete, and beckoned the time to prepare spiritually for the celebration. Vida was so struck by the beauty of the plate made by St. Andrew’s School 8th graders, that she shared it with an entire school assembly. She spoke of how fragile this gift is, the care in which it should be handled and the resemblance of this piece of art to our world. We were all moved by her words.

Recess! We began our connections at EP Primary Sokode-Bagble at recess! Vail Mountain School sent peace catchers to these friends they are connecting with for the second school year. Mrs. Blakslee shares in her message, “We should all catch a piece of goodness and peace each day.” The students were equally excited about the mural and could hardly contain their excitement about the new strong futbols! Students were shy and slow to warm up with our discussion on peace building, until we asked about the messages from the VMS peace flags last fall. Then, a significant number of hands went up, sharing one-by-one the messages- love, hope, community, tolerance. It makes a difference for these messages to come from friends!

Our final stop this day is RC Girls, where they are also in recess, which quickly turned into a photo op and tag with the CIH volunteers. In our opening circle in Rita’s P2 class we had a visitor join us. Mawumor, a KG child, was so drawn that he joined in- introducing himself firmly, as if this was his class, leaving no doubt he should participate. His “new classmates” made him welcome and generously offered crayons and bits of paper. Ms. Daria Collins 2nd grade class at Springdale Elementary School in Atlanta, matched with this class, sent cut and paste friendship art. Children use razor blades to cut paper and sharpen pencils. They delighted in the variety of materials offered for the collage pictures. Wonderment could be seen as they rolled glue sticks in and out, learned how to put the caps on and off of the markers and experimented with ways to add additional paper to their drawings.