Teaching a hero’s legacy to a new generation
Published: January 14, 2006
Arthur Schiff opened the pages of “I’ve Seen the Promised Land,” a book about the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., and turned to the children in front of him.
“What do you know about Martin Luther King?” he asked the children, a group of first-graders at Cahuilla Elementary in Palm Springs.
When you’re only 6 years old, King’s multiple accomplishments - the Nobel Prize, the March on Washington, the bus boycott in Montgomery - tend to get boiled down to the most essential elements.
“The black people, he made them play with the white people,” said LaShae Warren, 6.
Schiff, a volunteer with the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program of the Coachella Valley, smiled at her and flipped to the next page. He was one of a half-dozen RSVP volunteers who marked Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Friday, a few days early, by reading books about King to the students at Cahuilla Elementary.
And like many of the volunteers, he took the time to explain parts of the book and gently ask the children questions, too.
He asked Timothy Medley, 6, and Thornton Bradley, 7, if they knew what happened to King.
“Martin Luther King got shot,” said Timothy. “Some men shot him.”
“Why?” Schiff asked.
“Because some people didn’t like him,” Thornton said.
“The reason is there were a lot of people who didn’t want everyone to be equal,” Schiff explained. “They wanted people to be judged on the color of their skin.”
The big picture
Phillip Huebner, RSVP’s school program coordinator, was pleased to see the children, kneeling on their chairs for a better look at the books, respond so enthusiastically to the project.
“I hope the kids will get a greater recognition of why they’re getting a day off (on Monday) and what he did … what he did for equality in this country,” Huebner said. “Everybody benefits from his work is how I feel. The younger we get this instilled in children, maybe it will carry over to their adult lives.”
Reading coach Melissa Patterson was delighted that RSVP chose to donate all the books that they read - 15 hardcover books that will drastically expand the availability of books on King’s life. She noted that the school has had to rely on such donations, including funds from Rotary International, to buy new library books over the past couple of years.
Good reading skills are crucial, she added, and anything that gives children more chances to read - and improve their reading skills - is a boon, especially in this day, when children are tested on their reading skills each spring.
“Kids know (state tests) are coming in April, and (nearly) everything we do is leading up to that,” Patterson said, referring to the tests that are used to create performance reports for all public schools.
Joetta Gambill, a La Quinta resident who joined RSVP this year, decided to test the children on their reading comprehension after she shut her copy of “Martin’s Big Words.” She asked third-graders Michealla Lee, 9, and Keyonna Williams, 10, if they knew what King’s most important message was.
Michealla had it all figured out. She said, “To love.”
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