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If your child is interested in drawing a colorful picture with caption for publication in our series, please email interests to: delilapress@gmail.com

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We are currently open for submissions:

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The Day the Students eLearned From Home (What it was like ‘returning to class’ online, rather than in the school building, March 2020)

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The Farthest Distance (Accomplishing your goals and taking a moment to look back on how far you’ve come, and look to the future. Alternate ways ‘graduates’ celebrated these milestones and their successes)

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The Day the School Doors Opened (Fall 2020’s New experiences wearing mask, seeing everyone in a mask or shield, new cleaning/distance routines, riding the bus, car line, entering school, walking the halls, sitting in class, playground, hallways, lunch room, Music Class…)

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Writing is Connection

See below for photos.

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When Covid first hit our community and the country went into ‘Safer at Home’ status, we had just completed our Friday the 13^th Field Day and were beginning our Spring Vacation, fully expecting to be back together at school in just two weeks. On March 16^th, 2020, the President declared a National Emergency of “15 Days to Slow the Spread,” https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/15-days-slow-spread/, and we have not had a ‘normal’ school day since.

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            It was sad and confusing as a teacher, going back to our silent classroom in June, to pack up children’s belongings, erase their cute equations and writings off the whiteboard, find little triangle notes that said, “Write me a note!” and put away the classroom materials for the year.

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            It is difficult enough for an adult, let alone a child, to cope with being quarantined from family and friends, along with navigating the fear and uncertainty of illness and much civil unrest. Children do not always recognize or understand the catalyst of their discomfort or how to broach the subject of such concerns. Most times, unless you as the adult instigate conversation or a writing or drawing prompt, you will not know what they are thinking or feeling – nor how to address it.  It has always amazed me, to discover what children are really thinking. Until you inspire them to draw and write – you have no idea how brilliantly thoughtful or how deeply moved they are by an event or subject.

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            I had always utilized this awareness as a teacher, but it truly struck home when my husband and I were on our way to visit family in New York on September 13^th, 2001. Plane tickets in hand, we bypassed the Tampa airport for the long drive along I-95. Our eight-year-old son, Daniel commented on the unexpected sadness provoked by seeing all the flags at half-staff along the 1,200-mile route.

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            Compelled by grief and wonder, we pulled into The Pentagon parking lot. Our stoic middle-school son, Michael, silently surveilled the charred flag draped beside the gaping wound in the building, where office furniture perched precariously at the edge of broken floors. Had he not written an essay for school we would never have known the maturity with which he’d discerned this experience. His piece was published on the front page of Brandon Valrico Journal, September 2001 edition.

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Thank you for helping us to build an empathic community committed to developing conversation and self-awareness for our youth.

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