By Carol Stiffler
When you’re 8 years old and about four feet tall, high schoolers can seem huge, tough, and intimidating – and so much older. That’s four good reasons to keep a safe distance away from them.
Last week, the 25 second graders in Alesha Havens’s class came face-to-face with teens in Linus Parr’s high school art class, and odds are, the high schoolers were far more nervous. But they also had 25 incredible surprises.
The art students had secretly been working on a very personal project: They had sewn a stuffed animal for each child. Not just any stuffed animals – the exact ones the second graders had dreamed up earlier in the year.
Teacher aide and art student Addison Schroeder, 17, a senior at Newberry High School and multi-sport athlete, has spent the past two years spending a couple hours a day in Havens’s classroom. Parr and Schroeder learned about a similar project in another school, and she was on board to do the project with her second grade students.
“I did not tell my students that this was happening,” Schroeder said. “I just had them draw a picture of their favorite animal, or an animal in general, and I had them color it so we knew color schemes to work with also.”
They were free to add details, and did they ever. Pink leashes, careful fish scales, cranky lion faces, a technicolor duck…there was no limit. Schroeder collected the tiny masterpieces and brought them back to her art class, where Parr helped them create a sewing pattern for each animal. They figured out what fabrics they’d need, and Parr scrounged them up. The class tackled a minor sewing project and gained a bit of sewing experience, and then finally, months after the kids put crayons to paper, the high schoolers began working on the animals.
It was a tall order.
“Second grade drawings are not that easy to understand,” Schroeder said. “A lot of the drawings were tricky.”
Havens, who loved the idea, said Parr insisted the creations stay true to the second-grade version. No upgrades, improvements, or adjustments.
“Mr. Parr had said one of his students said ‘This is a colorful cat – it has purple, yellow, and pink.’ And Mr. Parr said ‘Then you’re making a colorful cat.’ And it represented it perfectly,” Havens said. “It was adorable.”
Schroeder constructed a brown teddy bear with a yellow unicorn horn.
“I loved it,” she said. “I was worried at first because I had only had brief sewing experience, but I loved the end result.”
So did the students. As they were given their animals one at a time, and received back their original drawing, understanding hit home fast.
“They were mindblown,” Schroeder said. “It was total shock, and a lot of them were trying to really think – ‘This is happening! They made my drawing come to life!’”
Havens said the art students were a bit shy at first, but they were happy, too.
“They were full of smiles, and their faces reflected that they were proud of what they did,” said Havens, who hopes this will become a second-grade tradition.
“Our high schoolers don’t always get the credit they deserve,”” Havens said. “They are role models for our kids, and that was such a cool thing to see.”
Parr said a main lesson learned was one of humanity.
“A big lesson was my high schoolers learning to give back as they head off to adult life,” Parr said. “By the same token, how many second graders did we change forever? These are things you’ll never know. How many second graders will now perform acts of kindness for another human because of this act towards them? Kindness begs kindness – we know this. Hate begets hate. If you do acts of kindness, you will get returned acts of kindness.”
As for Schroeder, she will graduate with honors in June and is leaving for Saginaw Valley State University in the fall. She’s majoring in elementary education, and plans to be a second grade teacher someday.
