Spotlight on Teaching: Telling a Hero's Story
by Lucie Aidinoff, Dean of English
At Grace Church School, our collective commitment to social justice is foundational to each student's experience. The study of social justice begins in junior kindergarten and continues through grade twelve. Thus, on the Wednesday preceding the Martin Luther King, Jr. federal holiday, the community takes the opportunity to mark his legacy with a peace march honoring human rights heroes, a peace chapel and student led symposia and an assembly that focus explicitly on King’s legacy.
At Grace Church School, our collective commitment to social justice is foundational to each student's experience. The study of social justice begins in junior kindergarten and continues through grade twelve. Thus, on the Wednesday preceding the Martin Luther King, Jr. federal holiday, the community takes the opportunity to mark his legacy with a peace march honoring human rights heroes, a peace chapel and student led symposia and an assembly that focus explicitly on King’s legacy.
The eighth-grade class takes on the responsibility of telling these heroes’ stories to the lower school and early childhood students by writing engaging narratives that reflect the importance of embodying the values we treasure at Grace.
As Dean of English and the eighth-grade English teacher, I am moved each year by the care with which our students write these books. The skills that the eighth graders acquire earlier in the year in studying literature and learning to focus on another author’s language as well as on their own, help them to create coherent biographies and explain salient concepts.
Read the full story on the Grace News site.
© 2022 Grace Church School
Grace Church School is a co-educational independent school in downtown Manhattan, New York City providing instruction for nearly 800 students in Junior Kindergarten through Grade 12.
