Reunited! The whole family is back for LINC's KCPS programs (and it feels so good)
“Look out! Scoot back!”
After 14 months of separation and digital screens, enrapt LINC children were creeping in too close for a very real, very in-person moment preparing to launch in the Troost Elementary School gym.
Some 20 sets of eyes, peering over as many face masks, watched as the visiting Mad Science teacher “Cosmic Casye,” on her knees, a lighter in her hand, set up a blue bottle rocket on wheels that was corked with some volatile gas.
A Mad Science bottle rocket launch startles the students at Troost Elementary.
The whizzing pop wasn’t really that huge, but the children jumped — even started to run away — as if the bottle zipping across the floor were a NASA fireball.
Then the squeals turned into laughter. Children looked delightedly into the faces of all their friends in a spontaneous glow. Everyone together. Finally. No more classrooms split by A days and B days.
At the start of May, as Covid cases fell and vaccinations rose, Kansas City Public Schools determined it was safe enough to open classrooms for all children at the same time after holding split classes since March. And the district also opened the doors again for LINC’s visiting programs like Mad Science, Urban TEC, Kansas City Young Audiences and Harmony KC.
“We are all one big happy family today,” said Augustus Zuo, LINC’s Caring Communities Coordinator at Troost.
Border Star Montessori students take a dinner break at plastic-shielded desks.
The laughter is contagious. Zuo saw it in the students, in the parents when they dropped their children off and picked them up, and the staff.
“I like being around my friends,” Troost Fifth Grader Aniya said, “because I missed them.”
This is what being back together means.
It means the raucous morning chants at LINC’s program at the African-Centered College Preparatory Academy regained their full voice.
“Learning Center, how are you feeling?!” LINC staff Shirley Scott sang out to the rows of children in ACCPA’s gym. Their answer, in rhythmic chorus and a flurry of stomps, claps and fist pumps, spoke universally across the spring morning after Covid’s long winter.
“FAN-TAS-TIC! . . . TER-RI-FIC! . . . ALL DAY LONG WHOOP! WHOOP!”
“Our parents came in and we were so excited, we had the high-fives, the bumps, the hellos,” said LINC’s ACCPA Caring Communities Coordinator Brenda Newsome. “Everybody was missing the hugs.”
Covid safety protocols remain in place, she said. Everyone’s temperature is checked, hands washed, masks worn (and LINC provides masks for children who leave theirs at home).
“We spread out and keep them distanced,” Newsome said, “which is hard (because) they’re so excited to see their friends.”
LINC staff start the day with language flash cards at ACC Prep.
The contact that students, district teachers, LINC staff and families created during the pandemic’s separation was important. It kept up critical relationships.
But even though students may have been seeing each other on screens, said Border Star Montessori Sixth Grader Aniyah, the May reunions still brought “the excitement of seeing your friend you haven’t seen all year.”
Aniyah and fifth grader Phillip Jackson were among the students in a LINC classroom using the occasion of being together to collectively work on “The Pact” — a covenant of agreements like “Respect each other and yourself,” “One voice at a time,” “No messin’ around,” and “Don’t yell unless allowed to . . .”
Garfield students learn to play the violin with Harmony KC
“It’s just a good community,” Phillip said about the LINC experience. “They take care of us.”
These are exciting times for LINC staff as well, said Shelley Taylor-Doran, the Border Star Caring Communities Coordinator. “It’s a beautiful thing,” she said, “planning things for the kids.”
And being “in-person,” added Phillip, “brings stuff to life.”
At Garfield Elementary School during the middle of the week, LINC hosted both Mad Science and the Northeast Kansas City Harmony Project, which teaches children to play the violin in its mission to connect them to the power of music.
“Kids love the hands-on activities,” said LINC Caring Communities Coordinator Deanna Snider. “They love the interaction.”
This all is so much better, said Garfield schoolmates Abdiel, 11, and Alexander, 9.
No more of getting only two days a week together in school. No more separation from half of your friends. “There are more people,” Abdiel said, “and we get to do more projects and stuff.”
Abdiel and Alexander send greetings at Garfield
They send us off, speaking in unison with a bilingual, Spanish and English parting:
“Todos estamos aqui teniendo divertido . . . everybody is back at LINC and it’s so much fun.”
By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer
Video edited by Bryan Shepard
Border Star students prepare to return to their classrooms after outside play.
Troost students are reminded how to create safe space.