Back To School Issue 2018
Inside Cool Classrooms; Packing Lunch, Bento-Style; Camper Playhouse; Youth Football: Tackle Vs. Flag
Inspiring Minds
In middle school, I had an art teacher named Pecky Kaupelis. Her classroom was as unconventional as her name. To enter it, kids had to pass under a sheet of shiny silver streamers, hung from the doorway to create a waterfall effect. There was a heated pole running up the center of the room (most…
The Art of… Foraging for Art Supplies
After years of feeling pulled between two passions: making art and studying, teaching and practicing Stone Age technology, Nick Neddo asked himself two questions. “If I lived in the Stone Age, would I consider myself an artist? And I realized that the answer would be yes because that’s just who I am. And the next…
How Do I Help My Kid Deal With Back-to-School Anxiety?
During the summer between sixth and seventh grade, a rumor spread that another kid was going to beat me up on the first day of the new school year. She was going to wait inside the school until I arrived, announce that she didn’t like me and then fight me — enough details to make…
Spectacular Spaces: Learning Environments That Please the Eye and Stimulate the Mind
For nine months of the year, kids spend about seven hours a day at school — a considerable chunk of time. It makes sense that the spaces they occupy during those hours can contribute to their academic success. As teacher and educational journalist Mark Phillips writes on the website Edutopia, “The physical structure of a…
Being a Good Citizen: In Their Own Words, Challenge Participants Explain What the Term Means to Them
What does it mean to be a good citizen? That’s one of the questions in the Good Citizen Challenge, a civics project in which Vermont K-12 students can earn points by visiting historic sites, learning about government and engaging in their communities. According to the kids who’ve completed the Challenge, good citizens are helpful, kind…
Exploring Old-Growth Forests
When my son, Jesse, was born 10 years ago, the one thing I knew for sure was that I would bring him to the library regularly. Other parenting advice might be complicated and contradictory, but the benefits of reading to him seemed simple enough. Suddenly, though, he was practically in kindergarten, and we hadn’t gone…
Standing Up, Speaking Out
In 2010, while Ann Braden was camped out on the couch with her preemie son, she read Louise Erdrich’s memoir of early motherhood, The Blue Jay’s Dance. Inspired by the author, Braden experimented with creative writing. In September, Braden’s debut novel, The Benefits of Being an Octopus, hits bookstore shelves, with a starred review from…
Habitat: Camper-Style Playhouse
Catherine Drake and Rich Levine were itching for a project last mud season. The Stowe couple spend a lot of time with their two granddaughters — 4-year-old Nora and 2-year-old Claire — who also live in Stowe. They decided to build them a playhouse. Drake and Levine weren’t newbies to tiny-house building. Years ago, when…
Fun for All
In 2010, Julia Wayne was working as an early childhood special educator for the Burlington School District when she realized there was no local playground accessible to all of her students, who had a variety of diverse needs — including autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and visual impairment. So she set out to get one…
Ultimate Competition
Last fall, Vermont made history — and got a shout-out on “Saturday Night Live” — when it became the first state to sanction ultimate frisbee as a varsity high school sport, beginning in the spring of 2019. In August, the Vermont youth team that competed in the Ultimate Frisbee U.S. Open’s Youth Club Championships in…
Top Brass
Vermont schools have reopened with a new leader at the helm. In August, Gov. Phil Scott appointed Dan French secretary of education. French, of Manchester Center, fills the position vacated by Rebecca Holcombe, who abruptly resigned in late March. Deputy Education Secretary Heather Bouchey has served as acting secretary in the interim. French started his…
Onigiri: Japanese Rice Balls
I’ve been packing school lunches for 10 years, since my daughter started kindergarten. Early on, I found an online community of bloggers who wrote about how to create bento — the name for a Japanese-style lunch packed in a multi-compartment box — and bought all sorts of cute boxes, tools and cookie cutters to aid…
Dream On: Make-a-Wish Kid’s Book Tells Her Tale of Healing
Name: Jamie Heath Age: 17 Town: Barre Three years ago, Jamie Heath swam with sea turtles in Hawaii, a dream come true thanks to Make-A-Wish Vermont. This experience, which the teen described as “breathtaking,” was an important part of her healing process after a prolonged illness. Jamie tells the story of her wish in a…
Parent Portrait: James, Eli & Oliver
Every morning for years you’ve drawn your cartoon character, Johnny Boo, in your kids’ elementary school classrooms when you drop them off at school. When did you start? James: I think I started when Eli was in second grade. And the only reason I didn’t do it before then was I couldn’t find a whiteboard…
Ready, Set, Kindergarten: Why I Dropped my Fight for Early Enrollment
My first child, Luna, who turns 6 this October, was still a baby when friends and family started asking the question: What are you going to do about school? Before long, I learned the significance of Luna’s fall birthday. She was an “October baby,” which translates loosely to, “Hoo boy, you just missed that school…
Heads in the Game: Will a Switch From Tackle to Flag Save Youth Football in Vermont?
On a humid August evening, around two dozen boys and two girls ages 6 to 14 assembled on a field at Bayside Park in Colchester for a preseason practice of the Colchester Catamounts coed youth football program. Longtime coach Glenn Cummings called a pair of eighth graders to the front of the group to lead…
