MARSHFIELD — Governor Winslow Elementary School employees presented the school’s progress on its project titled “Governor Winslow: Together We Belong” with help from some special guests—elementary school students who shared art projects and told the community what belonging means to them.
As part of the project, which started two years ago, the school formed a committee to update the campus’ appearance, hired two therapy dogs, and adopted new strategies to encourage self-care and open conversation among staff.
Each grade level developed an assignment for students to celebrate their “heritage, talents, interests, identity,” and students proudly presented their projects at the meeting.
Kindergarteners cut out and assembled paper flowers labeled with important things about the student—one kindergartener who presented wrote “forgiving, grateful, nice, smart, and GWS.”
First graders will make stars with five points of belonging: family, traditions, things that they love, heritage and community. The stars will come together in a classroom constellation celebrating diversity and belonging. Each second grade student made a square with drawings that represented their heritage, and all of the squares were united into a quilt.
In third grade, students drew backpacks with patches of their interests and communities they belonged to. Fourth grade students researched the foods that were important to their family and gave them a sense of belonging, and some shared the recipes at the meeting.
“Our interpretation of belonging was unity and bringing people together. And so when we thought about it, what brings people together? It's food,” a third grade teacher said.
One student chose carrot cake with cream cheese frosting because he first tried it at an Easter celebration as a toddler. His tip: add pecans on top of the cake.
A group of fifth grade students came up with the title for their project: Inside the Outline. Students drew silhouettes of themselves and filled the space with drawings and writing about the things that make them special.
“The reason they chose a silhouette was because they wanted all the fifth graders to have conversations about what was special and unique about themselves that they maybe wouldn't have said on a daily basis,” a fifth grade teacher said.
The presentation ended with a video of students sharing their definitions of belonging. “Belonging to me means including people,” they said. “Belonging to me means making people smile. Belonging to me means playing together with different people.”
And lastly, students in the video were asked if they felt like they belonged at Governor Winslow School. In response, three students made hearts with their hands and said, “oh, yeah we do!”
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