Over the past several weeks, Kindergarten students have been learning about peaceful leaders and social advocacy. They’ve discussed Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, and Mother Theresa, and connected their leadership to present-day leaders like Nobel Peace Prize recipient Malala Yousafzai, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and Water Protectors, and Marshallese poet and climate change activist, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner. Students have been exposed to methods used to shift awareness and policy, like speeches, service, protests, and poetry. Throughout their unit, Kindergarteners have explored the following essential questions:

-Who are leaders?
-What does it mean to be peaceful?
-What is peace?
-What problems are people trying to solve?
-How can we be the change in the world?
Ultimately, our goal is to inspire our students to identify ways in which they can be positive leaders of change at Meridian, within our local community, and in the world!
By Meridian Kindergarteners
We have been learning lots about peaceful leaders and their hopes and dreams in class. We learned about Martin Luther King and how people can write, speak up and march to make change. People march and protest because they are sad and that’s a way they can show other people.
It’s happy and sad when we learn about these peaceful leaders because there are bad things that happened to them, but in the end they helped solve a problem. It’s kind of a funny feeling. It’s important to learn about these leaders so we can celebrate them. It’s helpful to know what we can do to make the world a better place. One way that you can help is to become a teacher some day!
We have hopes and dreams of our own. We dream that this world (and universe) will have more love and kindness. We also wish that nobody would want to hurt anybody else. We dream that people will be healthy, that there will be no more wars, and that people will love who they are.