The Healing Power of Words

Located in New York City, Public School 3 is less than one and a half miles from the World Trade Center. So as expected, this year's school library writing festival was particularly poignant. During one of our evening reading sessions, a sweet, sensitive fourth-grade girl broke down in tears as she recalled her 9-11 story. There were also poems about the terrorist attacks and expressions of appreciation to our firefighters and former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

P.S. 3 has more parent involvement than most schools. Our annual writing festival was conceived five years ago by parent Barbara Stern, who wanted to create a low-tech, low-stress, and inexpensive way to get students involved in a project that encouraged creative expression and individuality.

The library, a big and inviting space, was a logical place to house the event. It's also one of the most popular destinations in our school; kids have a weekly class with librarian Jackie Peters, who reads to them and leads discussions.

The weeklong writing festival, which encourages our 520 students (kindergarten through grade five) to become burgeoning writers, typically takes place in January. But this year's event was delayed until March because our library was being used to house five displaced classes from various schools that had been damaged in the 9-11 attack. The festival has several components: teachers assign a variety of subjects for students to write about; their works are hung in and around the library for public viewing; kids then read their works to their classmates; and finally, we invite children's authors to speak to the kids about their books.

The festival is usually held Monday through Wednesday, with room for supplementary events to spill into the following week. Each class visits the library to read the writings on display and three readers per class hold a 40-minute reading session. Peters coordinates all the readings and pairs classes of older and younger kids in a buddy system that always brings out the best in both—younger kids come away with a sense of accomplishment, and older students see how far they've come and take pride in entertaining younger kids. All learn how to survive stage fright and how to present their work to an audience. We also hold evening readings, where kids, parents, and staff attend and refreshments are served. Kids can't wait to get their hands on their classmates' work, read it enthusiastically, and watch the responses of others to their writings.

Susan Pope, the children's librarian at Jefferson Market, one of our two local library branches, also gets involved. She attends our writing festivals to read to the younger students and to hand out library card applications. Once our festival is over, students mount some of their work on a foam board and hang it for several months on the wall of the children's room at the Jefferson Market library.

This year, Peters added a new dimension to the event, sneaking in a valuable exercise in letter-writing skills. Each student from grades two to five wrote to his favorite author. Some students' letters have sparked correspondences with revered authors. R. L. Stine, the author of the popular Goosebumps series, was this year's visiting author, and Alan Katz, author of Take Me Out of the Bathtub and Other Silly Dilly Songs , had a huge thrill when one class marched in singing his songs. Another, Lloyd Moss, the author of Zin Zin Zin a Violin, gave the kids a really good sense of the writing process, from idea to manuscript to publishing. All authors sign their books and donate them to our library, so kids have the experience of coming across one of those books on our library shelves and remembering the day.

The writing festival is the only event that involves all of our students. It's a great unifying event, particularly this year, as it helped us appreciate the power of writing and gave us a sense of shared humanity.