On Friday, March 24 the inaugural class of kindergarteners who are now in eighth grade, unearthed a time capsule that they had buried in 2009. Fifty-three of the original class of 187 students who started school when Explorer K-8 opened are still attending the school.
Their current classmates and teachers; eleven of the original kindergarten teachers who are still teaching at the school; Stacy Tarbox, yearbook supervisor who worked with the students on the project; and Chris Healy, Assistant Principal joined these first “explorers” at the ceremony.
The kindergarten teachers – Jacki Forgit, Libia Colon, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Rebecca Honey-Baroudi, Jo Ann Thomas (formerly Farrell), Shirley Gimbel, Crystal (Robin) Crawford, Jennifer Leonard, Lori Linauer and Brooke Olsson (formerly Hoffenkamp) – looked on with pride and excitement to see the children who had grown up before their eyes from five year olds to young men and women ready to start high school.
Stacy Tarbox, a Physical Education Paraprofessional at Explorer K-8, whose son, Seth, was part of that first kindergarten class commented, “These fifty-three children have become like a family because they’ve been together for almost nine years.”
The project was the brain child of kindergarten teacher, Rebecca Honey-Baroudi.
Mrs. Honey-Baroudi stated, “As a kindergarten team we decided that we wanted a special way to remember the inaugural year kindergarten students. Since Explorer is a K-8 [Kindergarten – 8th Grade] school we thought it would be fun for those students who started in kindergarten the first year the school opened to have something to remember how significant their class was.”
As the cache was unearthed, the students reminisced with their former teachers about that day eight years ago when they had buried the container of memorabilia. When opened, it revealed a 2009 yearbook that the students had signed and two online articles printed out from August 2008 about the school opening. Also contained in the capsule were a newspaper article about former President Obama’s inauguration, a picture of the original class and DVDs with videos from the Kindergarten Celebrations [graduations] that year. Finally, there was an excerpt from Robert Fulghum’s All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. (See below)
Chris Healy, Assistant Principal, spoke to the students and said, “There’s fifty-three of you here today that started with us and that’s a great thing. This doesn’t happen very often – to be able to start a school in kindergarten and graduate eighth grade from that same school. It’s something to always remember and hold deep in your heart. All you eighth graders have been a great class and we’re very proud of you.”
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
1. Share everything.
2. Play fair.
3. Don’t hit people.
4. Put things back where you found them.
5. Clean up your own mess.
6. Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
7. Say you’re SORRY when you HURT somebody.
8. Wash your hands before you eat.
9. Flush.
10. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
11. Live a balanced life – learn some and drink some and draw some and paint some and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
12. Take a nap every afternoon.
13. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
14. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
15. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
16. And remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – “LOOK.”
― Robert Fulghum