Dear Readers,
B4 Literacy wants to Spotlight your children that are excelling in school and other areas. If your child is featured in the local newspaper or school newspaper, magazines or any other media or if you are just proud of child's accomplishments. Send us an email to b4litnum@gmail and we will spotlight your child for the world to see.
This month's Spotlight is on Evyn Thompson who attends Peabody Elementary, an optional school that studies cultural around the world in Memphis, TN.
Good Luck Evyn on all your future endeavors.
This is the article that appeared in The Commercial Appeal on Thursday May 7, 2009 written by Jane Roberts:
Peabody pupils immerse in study of other nations Programs provide intense lessons about foreign lands
Framed by a makeshift TV screen suspended by string from the ceiling, Evyn Thompson briefed her entire world on Kenyan coffee.
Yes, she's tasted it, and yes, she's well aware that Starbucks sells gallons of it.
Evyn Thompson's job was helping visitors at the International Studies Festival at Peabody Elementary understand the importance of coffee to Kenya's economy.
"It's fresher and sweeter than tea," she says, impressing guests at Peabody Elementary as either a spokeswoman for the coffee-growers or a 7-year-old who's given flavor and international commerce some thought.
After a year of studying Kenya, she may be both. Wednesday, Evyn and her first-grade contemporaries talked up the Swahili-speaking nation, "broadcasting" as newscasters the virtues of its grasslands, deserts, cities, rainforests and oceanfronts and hand-stamped the passports of hundreds of visitors in to see the final show of the year.
"All of our students study cultures around the world," said Jerry Sanders, 23-year music and dance teacher in Memphis City Schools. "This is the culmination of the year," he said, gesturing expansively to the annual International Studies Festival, a world of dialect, dress and geography spilling into the halls and wafting through the building.
Peabody, in Cooper-Young, is the district's only optional elementary for international studies, starting with kindergartners who spend the year studying the United States.
By the time they are fifth-graders, they've been immersed in the cultures of Kenya, France, Mexico, Russia and Japan and, beginning this year, will have spent six years studying Russian language.
The school is open to any child in the city who meets the prerequisites. The trouble is, it's become so well-known, there are few openings. "We have one or two left in first grade and some in fourth and fifth grade," said principal Kongsouly Jones.
Ayanna Guffin, a young dancer in tights and a black tutu, spent Wednesday interpreting ballet through the eyes of the French, moving through plié, jeté and relevé as she rolled the words off her tongue.
"I like to tell people about what I do," she said, striking the ballet poses. "I take ballet."
And at one time, her mother, Sarita Guffin, did too. The day for them starts at 6:35 a.m. when they leave home in Cordova for school.
"Peabody has given my children a well-rounded cultural background," she said. "When they leave the school, they understand other languages and cultures, and that is important to us."
And it's instinctively important to Evyn too, who will be in the France class as a second-grader next year. What she thinks will be most cool is "learning to spell so many different words," she says matter-of-factly.
This comes from a child who loved making mummies this year (to study the culture of Chile, Memphis in May's honored country) and proudly shows visitors her mummified Barbie doll. "When mummies are dead, they have to live in a mummy tomb, with spider webs," she said earnestly.
"Mummies really do exist."
This is the contact number for Jane Roberts - 529-2512.
