Sound Shore

I caught the annual “Gallery Walk” at the Thomas A. Edison Elementary School in Port Chester Thursday night, when the school pretends it’s a museum and the children serve as docents, explaining their own work to the community. It was truly a kick. The place was packed.

And you know how educators are constantly wringing their hands over how to get immigrant and Latino parents more involved in the schools? Well, there are lessons to be learned from Edison.

Anyway, I wanted to provide a transcript of the one-on-one lesson I got (and recorded) from a 7-year-old student, Alejandro Cotrina. He was standing dutifully next to the second grade exhibit called Our American Heroes, and I asked him to tell me a little about those heroes.

Am I right that this is an astoundingly complete summary for a 7-year-old?

“Well mostly I know a lot about Martin. He married Coretta Scott King. He didn’t want fights. He didn’t want violence, he wanted nonviolence. He stopped segregation. He said the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech – that was a famous speech. He’s very famous. He helped us all be friends.

“And he liked peace. He learned that he should use nonviolence from Mahatma Gandhi.

“Abraham Lincoln stopped the slavery. He still did wars. He really did a lot. He married Mary Todd. Mostly the good part is he stopped the slavery.”

… I’m not sure at what age I learned about “the slavery,” much less segregation and Mahatma Gandhi. But only a child could boil down Martin Luther King’s work as simply and clearly as, “He helped us all be friends.”

That’s Alejandro in the photo at left. More photos after the jump.

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