Inter-Divisional Magic

One of the very special parts about Brimmer and May is the positive interactions between Upper School students and younger students. Harvestfest is one of those annual events where Upper Schoolers are paired with younger students for the program’s events. At this community celebration, the kindness of the community is on full display as Upper Schoolers either help run booths, such as face painting and balloon animal making or bring students around to the different stations. The smiles and laughter that come from the field during this hour are contagious and everyone leaves feeling warmer.  

 

At other times, Upper Schoolers go into Lower School classrooms to collaborate on a project or to teach them a mini-lesson. Recently, our Academic English students were invited to read to first grade classrooms as the final stage of their project.  

 

These students were learning about idioms, were asked to familiarize themselves with ten American idioms, and create a children’s book with a message using these idioms. The students developed their ideas and wrote the text for their book. A children’s book would not be complete without illustrations, so students then developed sketches for their book and used an AI chatbot to fine-tune and create images and backgrounds for their book using their text. From this, the student creations just needed one more thing - an audience to read them.  

 

They later set off across Middlesex Road during their class period and read their books to our first grade students. This project, along with other cross-divisional initiatives, serves as both a valuable learning experience within the academic field and an opportunity for older students to mentor and positively influence younger peers. In this case, the positive display of writing created excitement about reading for some of our school’s youngest readers. Many of our students have memories of their own past interactions as Upper Schoolers with younger students, and they also have vivid memories of when they were younger and had positive experiences with past Upper Schoolers. This is truly something special about the Brimmer experience.