Arts and science education are vital. Let’s celebrate our hard-working creative teachers with two new Sparks stories – Wombat is Easy to Wow, illustrated by the City of Gulfport’s free Tot-Time pre-K program – and Well, Gee, It’s Algae! inspired by and illustrated by the USF College of Marine Science.
Writing an ode to how amazing algae is blew my mind. Vickie Daignault performed Well, Gee, It’s Algae! at USF’s annual Art + Science Night before a fun Algae Yoga session led by Aaliyah Miller. And of course a Spanish version’s on the way!
And my hope was once again renewed by the creative 3 and 4 year olds who listened to and illustrated a fun story of creative kindness, Wombat Is Easy to Wow.
I visited the City of Gulfport’s wonderful free Tot-Time Pre-K program with actors Fanni Green and Jim Wicker – longtime friends and theatre educators, who hadn’t had the chance to share a stage in many years.
Our invitation to the class led by teacher Jessica McKinney was thanks to poet Sara Ries Dziekonski, whose son is in the class. In my NEA grant project last year, Sara wrote collaborative poetry with Creative Clay’s member artists, inspired by their visit to USF St Pete’s College of Marine Science.
This pre-K class is meeting at the Gulfport Scout Center, because their space at the city’s recreation center was damaged in last year’s hurricanes. The Scout Center is a cool log cabin-kind of room, with a stage at one end, that’s covered in soft rugs for listening and activities.
So in a lovely twist, our audience was onstage and Fanni and Jim pulled up chairs beside them, to perform “Wombat Is Easy to Wow” – about a little girl who uses her wild imagination to make her big sister feel better.
Everybody listened, and now and then our young audience members had comments or questions. Afterwards, Sara sat onstage and asked how they could use their imagination to cheer someone up, to shape a collaborative poem that shared everyone’s ideas.
Sara snuck in with her year-old baby sleeping in a stroller. While she was talking with the children, her daughter woke up crying, so Sara brought her onstage as she took notes.
Ella was quiet, but tears were rolling down her cheeks so Sara pointed out that Ella needed cheering up herself, and asked the kids if she could give her some of their toys to play with. They all said yes, but Ella’s tears kept coming.
The beautiful thing that happened was that these kids saw a child even younger in distress – and without anyone suggesting it, a little girl got up to find a different toy for Ella.
Then another student did the same, and another and another, until every child was picking out a favorite toy to give her, often very gently touching Ella’s hair as they carefully stepped past her.
It was the act of all the other children spontaneously helping that made Ella stop crying, as a pile of dinosaurs and soft toys grew around her.
And I was starting to run low on crayons for the illustrations, a little boy told me, “Don’t worry. Just put them in the middle here and we can share.”
This is a free Pre-K education program the City of Gulfport provides.
So there’s hope.
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