Taking care of our flags: a powerful morning at Baker-Butler

Today we had a very special moment involving students and members of our armed service.

As a school we want to respect our flags as one way of honoring our country and members of our armed forces. In Albemarle County we know that we are teaching and facilitating our students to be Life Long Learners (see the 12 competences here), and one of these competencies is for our students to "participate fully in civic life...within the context of community." Today our students experienced a very powerful example of this particular competency.

As a school we raise the US and Virginia flags every morning and we lower them at night, but we wanted to empower our students to be a part of this important duty.

A few weeks ago we asked fifth grade students if they would be interested in taking care of our flags every day, and we were excited that we had over thirty students volunteer for this important part of civic life.

Today we gathered these students together to go over the details of how to take care of  the flags, including how to raise them, to lower them, and to fold the flags to store them at night.

What made the experience powerful for our students, however, is not just the lesson the learned but from whom they learned it: active duty members of the US Army, who are members of our community.

We reached out to members of the US Army's JAG (Judge Advocate General) Corps here in Charlottesville, and we were honored to have two members (both BBES parents) attend today. They delivered a powerful message to our students on why we honor the flag, what it means to them, and how to take care of our flags properly.

Our students learned a tremendous amount from these two servicemen, and we are now ready to begin to have our students take care of our flags every day starting Monday 10/27/2014.

We can't wait to begin this new tradition at Baker-Butler.

Below are some pictures of our very special morning today.

Talking to our students about why we take care of the flag

Demonstrating how to fold and to unfold the flag

Unfolding the flag

Raising the flag

Rendering honor to the flag

Practicing folding the flag

Students practicing folding the flag in groups of three

The final stages of folding the US flag

Baker-Butler at Barnes & Noble!

On Friday October 10th we were excited to have our Baker-Butler Book Fair at Barnes & Noble. This event was organized and run by our wonderful PTO. We had many students and their families come to purchase books, and Baker-Butler received portions of those proceeds which will be used to support our school. We had our incredible student art on display and we also had many teachers read books to students during the Book Fair. It was a lot of fun and another great Baker-Butler community event.

Some of our student art work at B&N.

One of our students under his art work.

Another student under her art work.

Ms. Eckerle reading to students.

Mr. Saunders & Ms. Eckerle reading to students.

Mr. Saunders & Ms. Eckerle reading "The Day the Crayons Quit."

Making Math in the Creation Station

Second Graders collaborated and created models of geometric figures using toothpicks, marshmallows and dots in order to determine the similarities and differences between plane and solid figures. They made these figures in our Creation Station. Check out some of their work below!