Everyone changes the world the best they can.
Some of the students at the Campus School may have found a way they can help, while at the same time coping with a war that affects them as much as it does everyone else.
"This summer I had the idea of having kids writes poems to send to soldiers," said Judith Thomson, a fifth grade teacher at the Campus School.
This year she has been teaching her students how to write poetry, so they could write it to the soldiers and her idea could come to life. Students like Andrea McGowen, 11, will be sending haikus, acrostics and lunes to soldiers in Iraq.
The fifth grade class, which is located in the elementary school on The U of M campus called The Campus School, has been working passionately on the poems. The students have their own reasons, but most of them have become more prideful of the soldiers and more understanding about the war.
These students, even though they are only 10 and 11 years old, have their own strong opinions about the war, the soldiers and the politics.
"People think kids don't know things," said Breana Cash, one of the fifth graders. "I watch the news. I watched the debates."
Breana said she hates the war and doesn't really like President Bush.
"What if someone's father doesn't come home?" she asked.
However, she is proud of the soldiers and hopes the poem she wrote will touch their hearts. She worries people do not write the soldiers as much as they used to.
John Patterson, 11, is sending the soldiers a poem he wrote about jet planes. But, like Breana, he would hate it if his mother or father had to fight.
"I would write them everyday," he said.
Thomson said all of her students have begun thinking about the war differently, more personally.
Preston Blair, another of Thomson's students, wrote a poem he said he hopes will help the soldiers realize they are making history.He feels he has gotten to know the soldiers in a personal way through the project, which is called, "Peddling Poetry."
"You know they are people and they want to come home," he said.Thomson had her students go to school on a few Saturdays to put in extra work on the poems. The students were glad to do it and writing the poems for the soldiers became very important to the fifth graders."It was like working on your holiday, but you get paid four times as much," Preston said.
Elijah Phipps, 11, said it was fun to come in on the extra days. One of his poems, which will soon be in the hands of a soldier, is about a flea market.
He and his dad sell antiques in a booth at the Mid-South Flea Market, and he thought it might remind the soldiers of their home.
"After a long day in the war it might feel soothing for them to sit back and read something from back home," Elijah said.
He now feels proud of them and his country. But he said he hates they are getting killed and the politicians aren't doing anything about it.
Thomson said her class just finished studying World War I and the students would see the weapons and think, "cool." War can be romanticized, but writing the poems has helped the students realize what it is really about, she said.
One of the students, Brendon Wright, 11, wrote an acrostic poem about Hitler, so the soldiers could remember that he had been defeated.
"If Hitler was killed, they could win in Iraq," Brendon said.
Like the other students, he is more proud of the soldiers than he had been before.
The students each believe that the poems are going to make a difference to the soldiers. They hope it will mean as much to the people fighting as does to them.
"They've put their soul into it," Thomson said.
Blake Acree wrote two poems. One was about the Navy and the other was about the beach. The poem about the Navy was his favorite. He liked working on the project, putting himself into it and spending some of his Saturdays at school.
Out of the 53 fifth graders who attend the Campus School, there are well more than 100 poems that will be shipped out, Thomson said.
She said the students have learned how to manipulate the language and use their words, but they also began caring deeply about writing them.
"It became not a school thing," Thompson said. "It became something from the heart."
