GARDEN GROVE : Youngsters Are Savvy About Peace

The 27 students in Rhonda Patcha’s class at Clinton School spent Tuesday morning brainstorming about peace.

With the word printed in large letters on the blackboard, the fifth-graders offered their definitions in bright chalk: “Love,” one wrote; “No name calling,” another added; others came up with “No war,” “No gangs,” “Be friendly to each other.”

Throughout the Garden Grove Unified School District, children on Tuesday observed United Nations International Peace Day, district spokesman Alan Trudell said.

Paul Portner, a teacher at Riverdale Elementary, started the program eight years ago. This year, the 670 students at Clinton and hundreds of others around the country were preparing their thoughts for letters they would send to the men and women stationed in Saudi Arabia. Their thoughts of peace adorned yellow paper doves and were sent to the Marine unit where the son of a Clinton custodian is stationed.

“A lot of them know something is going on, but they don’t know the specifics,” Patcha said. “I think kids are worried about war any time.”

At Riverdale, students sang peace anthems and released a weather balloon painted to resemble the Earth and a “peace dove,” actually a white homing pigeon belonging to student James Pett.

Since about half of Riverdale’s students come from Vietnam, Portner said, the annual peace-day activities have a special significance.

“The students know about the (Middle East conflict). They know what war is; many of the students in my class have parents who were killed in the Vietnam War. They take peace to heart,” Portner said.

One girl, Hoa Pham, read a first-person story about a girl whose father was killed in a battle and asked her classmates to remember why peace is so important.

“I want peace so your loved ones will be with you forever.”