Elementary school students learn courage

"Courage" is the theme that will guide Sisters Elementary School during the 1998-99 school year.

The students have launched a letter-writing campaign to find out what courage means to the people the students admire.

"Last spring, we were discussing possible themes for 1998-99 that would tie in with our previous themes, Respect, Responsibility and Community," said music teacher Elizabeth Renner. "(Councilor) Amy Stranieri came up with courage, a strong and flexible word."

"We try to do something different every year," Stranieri said. "The idea for the letter-writing campaign occurred to me after I discovered a book that listed the names and addresses of hundreds of people noted for their personal achievements."

The goal of the campaign is for every student to write a letter to a person that he or she respects and admires - family member, friend, famous person - about the word "courage" and to ask for that person's related ideas, thoughts and stories.

The students' letters include acknowledgement of courage as the school-wide theme for the year and the student's own ideas, thoughts and examples of courage.

The students tell the person they write to whom about the school-wide goal to receive 450 answers to their letters, and request an answer.

Because kindergarden and first-grade students aren't ready to write their own letters, modified and pre-printed letters that could be signed by the students were accompanied by one of their drawings.

Though most of those letters were addressed to family members, friends and teachers, first graders Cody Swartz, Sunnte Steineta and Nathan Uttleva decided to send their letters to Michael Jordan, Mr. Rogers and Mark Hamil.

Examples of letters written by several older students were used to generate ideas among younger students.

Many of the letters written by second and third graders went to people they particularly admired - among them, Clyde Drexler, Colin Powell, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.

Fifth grader Keith Weatherford wrote to Rosie O'Donnell. Jeffery Minke hopes for a response from Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Rose Slavkovsky is waiting for a letter from Oprah Winfrey.

All of the answers to the students' letters will be displayed in the school commons. At the end of the year, staff members hope to create a book full of thoughts and stories about courage for placement in the school library.

The letter-writing campaign will not stop with the students. Every member of the school staff will also write a letter. A cover letter will be sent to worthy people not chosen by students, with a piece of student art work representing courage included. Letters will also go to state legislators, government officials and Oregon State Supreme Court Justices.

In the hope of facilitating answers to the letters, parents are providing two 32-cent stamps, one for their student's letter, the other for the self-addressed envelope that will be included with each letter.

Parent participation might also include talking to their child about courage; discussing incidents in their own childhoods and decisions they had to make in their own lives that involved courage. They might even talk about their heroes and why they admire them.

Throughout the year, students will continue to learn about showing courage at school and in social situations; about the courage it takes to say no and how to resist peer pressure.

"We are very much aware of the courage we see in class, on the playground and in the hallways," Renner said. "We know that we have courageous students in our school."