BLOOMFIELD, NJ — September is a busy month for Bloomfield Public Schools students, and several districtwide activities were on display last week at Watsessing Elementary School. Hispanic Heritage Month, a national observance from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, was in full swing for each grade, and the yearlong, student-led Wingman program kicked off with an orientation assembly just for fifth- and sixth-graders.
In third-grade teacher Rachel Mazzetta’s classroom on Thursday, Sept. 22, students made cutouts of well-known Hispanic Americans whom the students had researched and written brief biographies about. The paper people included athletes Roberto Clemente and Oscar De La Hoya, entertainers Rita Moreno and Desi Arnaz, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Mazzetta’s class was joined by teacher Erin Rhinesmith’s third-graders and inclusion teacher Emily Whelan. Mazzetta said the activity was a primary lesson in research, because the children had to decide which facts about someone’s life were important. They worked in groups while compact discs of Broadway show tunes played. But this classroom activity had started earlier in the week.
“We began on Monday by talking about how to research,” Mazzetta said. “In the third grade, we start to build the research skills needed for the upper grades.”
On Tuesday, Sept. 20, the students read books depicting Hispanics, including one about the artist Frida Kahlo.
“We’ll keep looking at featured books,” Mazzetta said. “It’s good for children to see themselves in the characters.”
On Wednesday, Sept. 21, Spanish teacher Leonor Egusquiza visited, and on Friday, Sept. 23, Thursday’s paper dolls were displayed in the hallway.
Also on Friday, Sept. 23, second-grade teacher Laura Foster spoke to the fifth- and sixth-graders in the gym about becoming part of the Wingman program. The goal of this initiative is the fostering of inclusiveness and positive role modeling among children through peer relationships. This is done by having students initiate and lead classroom activities. The program was established by Ian and Nicole Hockley, whose first-grade son, Dylan, was one of 26 killed on Dec. 14, 2012, by a lone gunman at a Newtown, Conn., school.
At Watsessing, about 20 fifth- and sixth-grade students will be selected as Wingmen after an application process. They will be trained as Wingmen by “teacher champions” — Foster, guidance counselor Pam Catalano, inclusion teacher Joseph Milano and physical education teacher Chris Romano. The training will take two school days, which the student Wingmen will make up. Foster gave the children the basic idea of what it takes to be a successful Wingman and also a better student.
Paper plates and tubes of toothpaste were passed out to the students, clustered in groups of four. They were told to draw on the plate using the toothpaste. Foster said it was a competition. Consequently, some children made careful designs; others were more abstract. When the designs were completed, Foster said to return the toothpaste into the tube. She gave them one minute. Her impossible command, absent a wizard, brought squeals.
After a minute, Foster told the children that words spoken are the same as toothpaste in a tube: easy to say, impossible to unhear.
“We don’t always stop to think before we speak,” she said. “Only say things that are kind and don’t have to be taken back. The Wingman program is all about kindness, and you fifth- and sixth-graders can be leaders. You may not want to be a Wingman, but every day you wake up with the ability to change for the better.”
The Wingman application process, at Watsessing, was scheduled to begin this week.
Photos by Daniel Jackovino
Watsessing students work together on projects added by Daniel Jackovino on
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