As a grade schooler living in Spokane I was lucky enough to participate in the the Tessera program. It is similar to Kennewick's KOG and Richland's Gate programs... but, in my humble opinion, so much better.
To gain entrance, second grade students take a test to rate their academic, intellectual and creative ability. Those in the top 3% (yes, I was that awesome even at age 7!) of the district are invited to participate, but participation is always voluntary. From third grade through sixth I spent one day a week at Tessera (in a school across town) learning with a group of students from all over the district. The rest of the school week was spent with my regular classes.
My particular neighborhood, and thus elementary school, was much closer to the bottom rung of the social and economic ladder than the top. Yet there were about twenty students from our school that enjoyed the benefits of learning at Tessera.
I loved this weekly field trip and looked forward to the creative projects we worked on. One year was spent studying Japan, another Egypt (I had big plans to be an archaeologist after that!), another on creative writing, and in fifth grade we dreamed of the future.
In May of 1986 my little class of roughly twenty students hiked a trail along the Spokane River and buried a time capsule. We filled it full of our hopes for the future, sketches of what we thought that future may bring, letters to ourselves, an audio tape of our voices, and a trinket special to each of us. After counting our steps we drew what we expected to be a useful map and made plans to return to the site at noon on July 4th, 2010.
I had the honor of joining a few of my fellow classmates last weekend as we searched for our little hidden treasure. Wade, Jonica, Shauna, Vaughn, Aaron, Garrett (via phone call from France) and I laughed as we wandered the trail with our families. Two of our favorite teachers, Linda Andrews and Jayce Keeling, were also able to attend making it even more enjoyable. We discovered that we were not meant to be cartographers! Our humble map seemed to match a few locations but none contained our precious time capsule. As sad as we were about that, it was wonderful to renew old friendships and remember a time when life seemed so much simpler.
This last week I've thought a lot about those long ago times and friendships left in other cities. For me, that Spring was a turning point in my life, when innocence was lost and reality set in. The next year brought many changes- a move from the big city to the mountains as well as the loss of my youngest sister and favorite gandfather. Other changes were more internal and stirred by my participation in Tessera (see part 2).
So, while we may not have found our time capsule we were able to rediscover great friendships and long forgotten moments of our youth. That's better than any hidden treasure.
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