Earlier this month, I had the chance to say a few words at the Vermont State House. This was a wonderful opportunity to share both my own reflections and those of our 5/6 students about some of the important work we do together. Below are my words followed by a digital story narrated by 5/6 students. ~Alice

Thank you Tory, Brent, Governor Douglas. I appreciate the coordinated efforts of all the folks at the Vermont Folklife Center, Vermont Magazine, and Lincoln Community School in creating this event. I’m grateful to Project Citizen coordinator Bill Haines, playwright Dana Yeaton, documentarian Chris Urban, authors Elizabeth Winthrop and Julia Alvarez, and the countless others who provide inspiration for our work. Thank you, Donna Wood and Nancy McClaran, my partners in creative crime, who are always willing to set out with me and our students on yet another uncharted journey. Thank you, Tory, for enthusiastically encouraging our often chaotic explorations. And thank you to all the families who entrust us with your children and then work so generously with us on their behalf. 

I feel so grateful to teach and learn in Lincoln. It’s a community where we’re all encouraged to follow our clearest insights and our most profound passions. When we do what we love, we have the energy to go so much further.

In a moment, I’ll share with you my students’ reflections on three experiences--a civics project and two performance pieces--in which they presented their learning in a formal setting. I hope these excerpts reveal the power of providing students with significant choices and the chance to make a difference.

I hope it will be clear how motivation multiplies when students are given license to follow their own inclinations within a setting of high expectations.

You may miss some things we see consistently. In just this glimpse, you may not see the courage our students call upon to embody the fear, loss, and quiet anger of people in our own county whose life struggles unfold invisibly. And it may be difficult to sense the close bonds formed among students and teachers through the process of creating and honing a presentation about issues that truly matter to them. You won’t notice how, over the course of countless rehearsals, students with significant reading challenges painlessly memorize and internalize the complexity of an entire script and likewise come to grasp a distinct historic dilemma. You won’t experience how much a public presentation pulls a community together, moving all of us far beyond the boundaries of our classrooms to not only inform and inspire but also to renew our faith in the future. When young performers reveal a kernel of truth about our own story, we shift a bit. That’s how change happens.

I think it will be obvious to you that our young people have rich reserves of compassion waiting to be released.

I feel incredibly fortunate to be living in a time and a place where we are able to freely contemplate and advocate for the challenges faced by others in our expanding and overlapping communities. More than ever, I affirm the wisdom of our national values, that rights and good fortune go hand in hand with a responsibility to those less free and less fortunate. In the words of Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States and one of the most outstanding teachers our nation has produced, “If we want to have an effect on the world, we need to emphasize those things which will make students more active citizens and more moral people.” Thank you for being part of the village it takes to do that...and now, on with the show!

Reflection on Public Presentations and Performances by Alice Leeds from Lincoln School on Vimeo.

Additional note: Several days after this presentation, our 5/6 team traveled to Montpelier to present two of their Project Citizen portfolios at the State House. They returned to Lincoln with four state-level awards.