Popcorn and lemonade were powerful instruments of learning Friday for two dozen students at East Heights School.
Eighth-grade volunteers from Central Junior High School visited Joy Lominska's first-grade classroom at East Heights to share insights of author and poet Langston Hughes, who lived in Lawrence as a youth.
Melissa Lacey/Journal-World Photo
Alex Backus, Central Junior High eighth-grader, left, and Zachary Trowbridge, East Heights School first-grader, illustrate a poem by Langston Hughes, who spent his boyhood in Lawrence. The students paired up on Friday for a lesson on the famous Kansas poet whose work will be celebrated at an international symposium Feb. 7-10 in Lawrence. The events sponsored by Kansas University and the Langston Hughes Society celebrate the centennial of Hughes' birth.
Students huddled together to read some of Hughes' poems written for children. The children picked a favorite to illustrate on paper. They studied a map of where the writer lived and attended school while in Lawrence.
Everybody topped it off with a snack, which symbolized a bleak moment in Hughes' life. As a child, Hughes was denied entry to a picnic for public school children in Lawrence that was open to all except blacks. Popcorn and lemonade were on the menu.
"Langston Hughes was not allowed to go," Lominska said. "We're having the party he couldn't go to."
Central teacher Michel Loomis and Lominska collaborated on the students-as-teachers project.
"This is a fun way to teach," Lominska said.
Children's poetry-inspired artworks are to be displayed at Kansas University in conjunction with a Feb. 7-10 symposium on Hughes. The program includes poetry readings, a workshop for teachers, film screenings and interpretive dance. There will be about 75 presenters, including Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker.
Hughes would have turned 100 years old Feb. 1. He died in 1967.
In the first-grade classroom at East Heights, Central student Faith Darnell was teamed with Shanda McDaniel, 7. They chose to concentrate on the poem "Baby." Its message is one any parent can appreciate � "Hey, Albert! Don't you play in dat road. You see dem trucks a goin' by. One run ovah you an you die. Albert, don't you play in dat road."
McDaniel sketched a small child standing next to a tree. Darnell penciled in a wide road, all the while offering nuggets about Hughes' life.
"Shanda, did you know Langston Hughes was poor? Do you know what that means?"
"He didn't have a lot of money," she replied.
"Yes," Darnell said. "He was so poor that he wore clothes given him by neighbors. Clothes they didn't want. And ... they didn't have a lot of money for food. One time he ate dandelions."
"Nasty," McDaniel speculated.
First-grader Jessie Rust and eighth-grader Lara Turner read and illustrated the poem "Mother to Son." The inspirational message from adult to child was that climbing the stairs of life will be difficult. Sometimes there will be darkness, confusion. But people just can't quit climbing.
"Reading the poems is the best," Rust said. "My favorite is 'Mother and Son.'"
Turner added: "I like working with little kids. You can open their minds to greater things."
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