Watsessing School in Bloomfield has s-two-pendous day

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BLOOMFIELD, NJ — Pun-tastic vibes brought the Watsessing Elementary School community two-gether on Feb. 22, aka Tuesday, 2/22/22. It was a happy day for numerologists, but Watsessing teachers were jumping for joy, too, because of the profusion of twos and the scholastic possibilities. Some teachers even came to work wearing tutus!

On the first floor, math interventionist Elena Kazoun, teaching a class of second-graders, seemed to be a chief instigator of “Twos-day.”

“Did you know if you weighed one million $100 bills, they would weigh 22 pounds?” she asked her class.

And Kazoun was not alone. Watsessing math interventionists come in pairs — read: two. The other was Isabella Campece.

“Why is Saturday stronger than a Tuesday?” Campece asked the children.

Answer?

“Because Tuesday is a weekday,” she said.

Reassuringly, no child fathomed the answer. But, actually, a student did know, or figure out or come close to the answer to the next question Campece posed: “Why did the bike fall over?”

Answer?

“Because it was tired.”

In addition to the wordplay that makes pun lovers groan and smile, there was hands-on classwork for budding Newtons to grasp with both mitts. The second-grade pupils of Kazoun and Campece did something called tessellations. This is the recurrence of symmetrical and interlocking shapes and patterns with no gaps or spaces between the shapes. Practice in forming tessellations would help students develop their ability to later solve mathematical problems, Kazoun and Campece explained.

In this practice, the students were given a board on which were three large, numeric twos. Provided with an assortment of small, plastic shapes, the entire board had to be covered with no overlaps or board peeking through. That is not easy for anyone. Interestingly, Kazoun said the assorted shapes were both soft and hard because some students had a preference.

“You did a great job,” she told a student who had successfully covered a board. “I hope you have a two-rific day!”

Now, with class over, looking at the wall clock indicating 1:50, Kazoun wondered why school was not being dismissed at 2:22. Nonetheless, she headed upstairs to determine, for the benefit of this newspaper, whether second-grade teacher Katie Dox was 22 years old.

On the second floor, in Dox’s class, was Laura Foster, the 2022 Watsessing Teacher of the Year.

“You are just too lucky,” Kazoun kidded her colleague.

Responding to Kazoun, Dox, who was raised in Bloomfield, said she was 24. In her class, penmanship was being practiced, and the children were asked to write their names carefully, for two minutes.

In a math and science class, teacher Athena Giordano asked sixth-grade students difficult, real-world questions that prompted discussions, such as: “What’s the difference between being paid $22 or owing someone $22?” Kazoun said an event like 2/22/22 “hypes up the entire school,” because it is a different day for students and teachers alike, the possibilities being endless.

“And they have to like our bad jokes,” Giordano added.

There was also an interesting activity in which each student was given a picture card cut in an unusual way. The pictures were images of butter, bacon, French fries, eggs, cookies, macaroni, jelly, hamburgers, cheese and the like. Students had to find the card’s mate by imagery and shape: butter fitted perfectly to jelly, burgers to fries, macaroni to cheese and so on.

At 3 o’clock, on the first floor again, Kazoun spoke into the office intercom to alert the students that the school day was over.

“Hi,” she began. “I hope you all had a two-rific day. But tell me something: Why was the ballerina sad? Was it because she lost her tutu?”

Watsessing Principal Gina Rosamilia afterward said the day and its activities inspired school unity.

“Kids were excited,” she said. “The whole school was involved, kindergarten to six. And every grade level had an activity.”

Photos by Daniel Jackovino