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Ricky Rocks Town,
population 74
Photos by Esther K.
Smith
Ricky Rocks “town officials” stand ready, with help from Mayor
Linda Rouches, to deal with the townspeople’s problems. From
left are Johnny Villafona, Marco Bibian, Antonio Sandoval,
Steven Swafford, and Alejandra Ledezma |
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By ESTHER K. SMITH
News staff writer
February 1, 2006
It takes a village to raise a child, and the third grade
teachers at Westside Elementary School found that a village can
also raise a child’s awareness — of what it takes to run a town.
A few weeks ago the three teachers, Shannon Perry, Luis Ziegner
and Debbie Eaves, started a project to learn about towns by
building one. Ziegner, whose focus would be on the art project,
began by assigning each of the third-graders to bring in a rock.
“We told them to go rock-hunting with their families,” he said.
“They were supposed to each bring one, but some brought quite a
few and others would say, ‘We don’t have any rocks where we
live,’ and that was ok.”
The next step was to clean and paint the rocks.
“We talked about their shapes, which would be good for what type
of building, where doors and windows would go, and what colors
to paint them,” Ziegner said.
Hands are raised with hypothetical
problems for the officials of Ricky Rock Town, shown in
background.
The result is a colorful village, dubbed “Ricky Rocks Town,” set
up in a corner of the back part of the main building. The
project will probably remain up until the end of the school
year, Perry said.
She said each class brainstormed a list of names, then voted on
the top two for each class, and there was a vote on the six
finalist names.
“Ricky Rocks Town was the winner,” she said. “I don’t know what
it means!”
To celebrate the town’s completion last week, the classes held a
ribbon cutting ceremony and invited Hood River’s mayor, Linda
Rouches, to participate.
Rouches came prepared with a stack of job titles, written on
individual sheets of paper, and looked for volunteers to be
mayor, police chief, city engineer, city planner, public works
director, and many others. Then she explained what their
responsibilities were.
“Let’s hear about some problem you might have, and we’ll figure
out whose job it is to take care of it,” she said to the
“townspeople.”
“What if there’s a fire near my house?” one child asked.
“Who would take care of that problem?” Rouches asked the
third-graders. “The fire chief!” She turned to the “fire chief”
and asked what she was going to do about this. The girl looked a
little blank.
“What your fire chief is going to do is get all the firemen and
send them out lickety-split, that’s what she’s going to do,”
Rouches said.
She routed each subsequent “problem” that arose to the proper
authority; from planning issues to crime to garbage collecting.
At the end, she and the “mayor” of Ricky Rocks, Rianna Piatt,
cut the ribbon to celebrate the opening of the town.
Shannon Perry said that each class will now expand on the civics
lesson by holding mock elections and role playing in the
classroom: “A post office that works, more city government,
possible police chief with speeding tickets,, etc.” She and
Eaves share the social studies segment of the integrated study.
“Each year we are building on this project,” Perry said. |
