Students Celebrate Bastille Day

Never mind all the coaching and rehearsing that went into Friday’s reenactment of the infamous storming of the Bastille.

When the time came, all 27 third-graders bused from their Long Beach elementary school to a Cerritos bistro acted precisely as their Parisian counterparts had in 1789: They charged a mock prison with all the grace of a hungry mob.

Giggles gave them away, but the students from Roosevelt Elementary were convincingly clad in peasant costumes they helped create.

And having studied the French Revolution in class over the past week, they even knew some history behind the holiday, officially celebrated on July 14.

“One of the things the kids really understood was the injustice that the royalty were doing to the middle- and lower-class at that time,” teacher Cheryl Patrick said.

Afterward, munching on the French fries, chicken fingers and pudding at Mimi’s Cafe (no cake as Marie Antoinette might have suggested), a few of the children compared Bastille Day to the excitement of the Fourth of July.

But as for Friday’s reenactment, student Tierra Shelmire concluded, “It was wacky.”