by Carla Goldberg

“We’re building a better world, one person at a time.” This is a beautiful song that we love in our preschool and Kindergarten. It really resonated with us this past week as we learn about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We have been reading a lot of books about Martin Luther King and his dream for the world. The Upstairs Preschool class and the Kindergarten class watched a portion of his "I have a dream." We have had difficult and important discussions with the children about what it means to treat each other with respect, to honor our differences, and to use our voices in a peaceful way to stand up for ourselves and each other.

As a staff we discussed that is is really difficult to have these conversations right now, with all of the uncertainty in the world, and that, nevertheless, this is the most important time to talk about it with our children. The children are our future, and we feel a great responsibility to help shape children, who will be active citizens in the world and contribute in a positive way.

In having these conversations, the children focused a lot on the environment and what we can do to make the world a better place. Here are some of the Kindergarten students' words:

"By cleaning up and love" - Moshe
"By not littering" - Tirzah
"Cleaning up the town." - Miryam
"Planting and making a beautiful world." - Archer
"By making it more beautiful." - Autumn
"By giving people food if they are hungry." - Annika
"By being together in sunshine." - Sammy
"Making people feel happy by giving them goody bags." - Brayden