A Festival of Learning : Students Studied to Give Events Meaning

For students at Miller Elementary School in Escondido, the Soviet arts festival will be remembered for much more than a one-time field trip to a folk dance or painting exhibit. After all, how many busloads of San Diego County children riding to the Soviet Georgian Youth Company’s performance Wednesday could play “Simon Says” in Russian?

But for the fourth- and fifth-graders at Miller, that game is only one of many activities involving Soviet culture, language and politics that their teachers have added to the curriculum to make the festival experience meaningful and long-lasting.

The faculty took to heart the information from two workshops on the Soviet Union given earlier this fall by the San Diego County Office of Education and from festival education guides prepared by specialists from San Diego city schools.

The students in Debi Johnson’s class are “traveling” to the Soviet Union as the first stop of an around-the-world “trip” to learn geography and world cultures during the next several months. Already, they have prepared individual passports using instant cameras and have studied immigration procedures on how to enter various countries.

Johnson has encouraged students to talk with their parents about what they know about Russia. “My dad has been telling me about (past) wars and all the guns and tanks they have,” said 10-year-old Henry Sintay, “but I think things are changing. . . . Gorbachev is the first good president they’ve got.” To which his 9-year-old classmate Michael Carley added, “I think he is OK.”

Kristen Shipley’s fifth-grade students have composed watercolor designs using Russian designs, and have learned to sing several songs in the language, including “Brat Ivan,” better known here as “Frere Jacques” or “Brother John.” They also drew up signs saying “hello,” “goodby,” and “thank you” in the Cyrillic alphabet to show to the dancers Wednesday, when they went to a performance by young dancers from Tbilisi at the Starlight Bowl in Balboa Park.

Teacher Ernest Kutcher is putting together slide shows from his trip to the Soviet Union a decade ago with the Phi Beta Kappa educational organization, drawing “oohs” and “ahs” from children when they see close-ups of Soviet children speaking in class and of the deep snows that sculpt that nation’s winter landscape.

Escondido schools specialist Pat Saville learned to play the balalaika (a triangle-shaped instrument resembling a guitar) as well as a Russian-style accordion to bring authenticity to the Russian folk songs that the students sing. And Kutcher added an album of Soviet rock music, which grabbed the attention of those children who disbelieved that rock is not exclusive to America.

Before Principal Judith Adams encouraged the staff to use the arts festival in a major way, few if any of the students knew much about the Soviet Union. “I guess I thought they were at war with us,” Meghann Kime, 10, said.

“With all the current news, it’s important for our students to have more information about the Soviet Union,” Adams said. “And, if you learn things in isolation” such as a Soviet folk dance, without tying it to larger issues, then “the learning is not as meaningful,” she said.

Shipley added: “Until now, all the kids heard about is ‘Star Wars’ and the like. Hopefully the legacy of the arts festival will be that our kids are going to be much more the children of the world than we were.”