Winterlude - Long Ago Stories

LONG AGO STORIES, stories that teach a lesson, myths, tall tales, folk tales, and fairy tales have all been passed down for ages, by word of mouth, from grandparents to parents to children, since before time began. Stories always have a part in Winterlude, and reading, writing, and telling stories is a component of every grade at Oak Lane, but our immersion in the world of Long Ago Stories has been unique. Walk into any classroom, and you’ll find piles of story books made up of stories from long ago, and universal tales that have been told to children as the wisdom of the ages is passed down. We were fortunate that renowned Native American storyteller, Dovey Thomason, was available for a captivating assembly that inspired many conversations and imitations of her dramatic style.

Winterlude culminates in the Winter Concert, a celebration in the performing arts of each year’s theme. Over the years, Marlis has often created a concert around a story, and that seemed like a natural for this year, but instead of looking for an existing story, we decided to create (or at least adapt) our own. Since we only had two weeks to create this story, plus a week to rehearse it, we started with an existing book, The Spyglass.

Just before Thanksgiving, the faculty introduced this story in a reader’s theater style performance, and then boiled it down to its essence: a place has fallen on hard times; someone shows up with a spyglass that will show the possibility of how things could change and gives that spyglass to another who will inspire people to make that change. We liked the wisdom of this story, about having a vision of making the world a better place, and then going out and working to make it so. The teachers set some basic guidelines for their class’ part of the story. The Kindergarten and 1st grade would create a part of the story where the spyglass inspires people to clean up a polluted place. Sherry’s 4th/5th grade class would set the mood for the beginning, and the celebration at the end. The 2nd/3rd Graders imagine the spyglass helping to settle an argument over whether the people should plant a garden or build a playground, and the preschoolers bring the flowers.

Each class imagined and discussed, drew pictures, read stories, and came up with ideas for their part of the story. By the beginning of last week, ideas were presented to Marlis, the 6th graders and I, and we got to work on the task of taking what the younger students had decided for their parts of the story, stitching them together into a coherent story, and then creating a concert around those ideas. When it became clear to the 6th graders that the setting of the original story (a king in a run down castle) had been abandoned for a more contemporary setting, the 6th graders had to come up with a new setting, and a new main character after they decided that it would be a better lesson in this story if it was a more ordinary person who could change the world.

After several discussions about who would have this spyglass in a world more like ours, they decided that it would be a kid. That was nothing compared to the challenge the Kindergarten and 1st Grade presented when they wanted a talking chipmunk in their part of the story! Then there was nothing left to do but write, rewrite, read aloud, figure out what else was missing, revise, revise and revise some more. In almost every class, discussions led to a list of ideas, and then that list got boiled down to two ideas, with the class evenly split between the two. The lessons of the stories were remembered, and in each class, a new idea was born, the combination of the two ideas: a forest in the city, a playground in the garden, and so on.

Once again, Winterlude gave the Oak Lane community a chance to learn together across grades, and to share a common purpose for these three weeks, and to strengthen skills of collaboration, problem solving, listening, and imagining.

-- Martha Platt, 6th Grade Teacher & Winterlude Committee Chair --

WINTERLUDE Themes Through the Years:
2008 STORIES
2007 BREAD
2006 RHYTHM
2005 DWELLINGS
2004 PHILADELPHIA
2003 FLIGHT
2002 TREES
2001 BRIDGES
2000 HOLIDAYS
1999 TIME
1998 COMMUNITY

An Evening with Armand Mednick and Doreen Rappaport

"I FOUND HIM, I FOUND HIM, he's alive, the boy from The Secret Seder!" These are the words that celebrated children's author Doreen Rappaport ran screaming to her husband after receiving an email from Oak Lane Day School music teacher Marlis Kraft-Zemel. This email informed her that the narrator and central character of her book, The Secret Seder, was veteran Oak Lane art teacher of almost fifty years, master potter and Holocaust survivor Armand Mednick. Following this astonishing initial contact, emails flew back and forth and ultimately resulted in an extraordinary evening at Oak Lane, when Mrs. Rappaport and Mr. Mednick met for the first time and told their respective stories relating to this book.

Armand Mednick, beloved art teacher at Oak Lane, has been touching the lives of children at this school in countless ways for 48 years, including telling his students in 1st through 6th grades his stories each year, to help put his art curriculum into a historical perspective. He tempers these stories to the children's developmental levels and sensibilities. The impact and the lasting memories created are an important and treasured element in an Oak Lane education.

Mr. Mednick's story is a long and riveting one of hardship, heartache, incredible determination, courage and survival. He was born Abraham Mednicki in Brussels in 1933, was smuggled out of Belgium as a young and very sick child, and with his family, hid from the Nazis in France. His name was changed to Armand Mednick and the family lived as Catholics. Armand's grandparents refused to leave Belgium, and as Jews died in the concentration camps. When he was eight, his father Bernard Mednicki, who had been drafted as a soldier in the resistance, heard about a secret Passover seder in the mountains. Showing incredible courage and in defiance of the Nazis, Bernard took his young son to the seder. For three years, Armand and his family lived among the Nazis, witnessing endless atrocities, but hiding and holding tightly to their Jewish heritage and beliefs.

Award winning author Doreen Rappaport writes about issues and individuals involved with social justice. She is also Jewish and grew up in a mixed Jewish family in show business. However, by her own admission she knew little about the Jewish resistance or the Holocaust until she began researching the topic. What she discovered "puzzled, challenged and amazed" her, and led to more exploring. One of the books she read was Bernard Mednicki's memoirs, Never Be Afraid: A Jew in the Maquis, which told the story of a Belgian Jew who was hiding out in a French village and took his son to a seder in the mountains. Mrs. Rappaport read many little known stories about Jews celebrating Passover and Hanakkuh in defiance of the Nazis, and decided to frame a story around this theme. Unable to locate Bernard Mednicki, she realized she would have to fictionalize the story as she did not have enough information to do otherwise. Thus was born The Secret Seder, told by the central character Jacques, who in real life is Armand Mednick.

Last summer Mr. Mednick's sister learned of the existence of a book based on their father's memoirs. Mr. Mednick acquired a copy and on the second night of Passover last year took it to colleague Marlis Kraft-Zemel. This led to the email to Mrs. Rappaport informing her of Armand Mednick's existence. Out of this initial contact developed the evening presentation at Oak Lane Day School, where approximately 150 faculty, Board members, parents, students, alumni and other invited guests gathered to hear these two remarkable individuals tell their respective stories and how they ended up sitting together on the same stage!

The Secret Seder is only one of the many books that Doreen Rappaport has written. Others include Abe's Honest Words, about Abraham Lincoln, Lady Liberty: A Biography, the Life of the Statue of Liberty, The School Is Not Whitey, a nonfiction book about civil rights, Freedom River about slavery, and Dirt on Their Skirts, about female baseball players. She also has several more books coming out soon, including Eleanor Quiet No More, about Eleanor Roosevelt. Many of Mrs. Rappaport's books have received awards and literary honors, including her book about Martin Luther King, Jr., Martin's Big Words, which has received The Caldecott Award (2002), The Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book (2002), Child Magazine Best Book Award (2001), The New York Times Book Review Award for Best Illustrated Children's Book (2001), and several others. It has also been chosen as the Signature Book for the 14th Annual Greater Philadelphia Martin Luther King Day of Service on January 19, 2009. The goal is to "encourage local students to read and discuss Martin's Big Words. The book presents a unifying message, which will allow students to reflect on Dr. King's 'Beloved Community.'"

Mrs. Rappaport's visit also coincided with Oak Lane's Parent Association's Celebrate Books Week, for which she was the guest author, meeting with and sharing her expertise with all the students in the school. In addition to the information she presented on writing a book, one of Mrs. Rappaport's key points was that everyone has stories to tell, and she encouraged the children to talk with their parents and grandparents, listen to their stories and write them down. Whether she is writing about Jewish resistance fighters, former slaves, civil rights workers or presidents in historical fiction or non-fiction stories, Doreen Rappaport is writing the stories that she deeply believes need to be told. One of these stories, The Secret Seder, miraculously found its way back to Oak Lane Day School, where it has such special meaning for this community, telling the story of our own cherished art teacher, Armand Mednick.

A Hands-On Lesson Using An Alternative Energy Source

IMAGINE THIS - powering your hair dryer or radio while riding a bicycle! Farfetched? Not really, as the 4th-6th grade students at Oak Lane Day School recently discovered in science class. As explained by science teacher Dottie Baumgarten, "the science curriculum this fall, which is focusing on sustainability, is geared towards having the students choose something that impacts their environment in a positive way."

Mrs. Baumgarten is using material from Earth Force, an organization that supports teachers as they teach children about the environment, and it involves a stepwise progression through the curriculum. The students began by inventorying the environmental topics that are currently impacting the community, such as tree planting, composting, native plants, reducing trash, recycling, etc., and they learned about each issue by surveying teachers, staff and students within Oak Lane Day School, as well as interviewing experts in the larger community, such as Susan Curry, who is head of the Environmental Advisory Committee of Ambler, and works with Pennypack Farm. She also helped set up Oak Lane's sustainable garden. Through this process, the Oak Lane students ultimately chose energy as the topic on which to focus.

The students' initial investigations taught them that the way we traditionally use energy hurts our environment, and that using alternative sources of energy is more earth friendly and responsible. To help demonstrate to her students how energy can be produced without any negative byproducts, Mrs. Baumgarten brought a generator into the science class, in which the energy of motion was turned into electricity. The design was a frame that held a bicycle, with the bicycle wheel connected to a generator which in turn was hooked up by wires to a board. On the board were three incandescent light bulbs and three fluorescent light bulbs controlled by an on/off switch. In addition, a hairdryer, fan and radio could also be plugged in and powered from the board. The 4th, 5th and 6th grade students learned several things from their interactions with the bicycle/generator. First, they discovered that they were actually making electricity that could be used to run a hairdryer or power electric lights. They also determined that fluorescent bulbs require less energy than incandescent bulbs. Mrs. Baumgarten led them to this conclusion by turning on the fluorescent bulbs one by one, until all three were lit, while a student pedaled the bicycle. Then she turned the three lights off and immediately turned on all three incandescent light bulbs, at which time the biker felt as if he or she had suddenly hit a wall! Finally, the students compared the energy requirements of the fan versus the hairdryer, which got them thinking about energy usage in their own lives, and ways they could help conserve energy, such as towel drying their hair, or using fans in the summer instead of air conditioners when feasible. They also wanted to know if the school used florescent lights, so they went to Oak Lane Head of School, Karl Welsh, who informed them that most of the school's lights were fluorescent and any that weren't, were replaced as they burned out.

This activity, in which the children learn through experimentation and investigation, question, form theories, and come to conclusions that result in new understanding, is the cornerstone of the way teaching and learning occurs at Oak Lane Day School. As is our philosophy, "children see relevance in their learning, develop a deeper sense of understanding, and truly possess their own knowledge." In addition, as stated by science teacher Dottie Baumgarten, "The exciting thing is that the bicycle/generator and the Earth Force curriculum is not standing alone, but is part of a larger, community wide sustainability effort." Here at Oak Lane, we all, from the youngest to the oldest, have endorsed and embraced this effort as a way of life, and are each doing our part, large or small, to help be responsible stewards of our environment.