Students at West Hartford’s Charter Oak International Academy began the week with a ‘peace-ful’ celebration.

By Ronni Newton

Charter Oak International Academy students and staff joined millions of people throughout the world Monday as they gathered to celebrate “International Day of Peace” and reflect on how they personally can create a more peaceful world.

As an International Baccalaureate World School, Charter Oak celebrates International Peace Day each year with songs, speeches, and by signing a “peace pledge.” Each student also crafts a special pinwheel for peace, which is then “planted” on the school grounds.

Following the singing of “Shalom Chaverim” by the fifth grade chorus and a welcome by Principal Juan Melián on Monday morning, Charter Oak parent Joanna Curry-Sartori, a therapist with The Bridge Family Center, led the community in a mindfulness exercise designed to channel “inner peace.”

“If we want to build more peace around us it helps to build peace inside us,” Curry-Sartori said as she asked the students, teachers, and parents to think about things – like walking through nature or petting a cat or dog – that make them feel peaceful.

She successfully kept a playground full of young children quiet as she asked them to pretend to be mountains and absorb the peacefulness of the sky above them.

“If you’re ever upset or worried, you can practice being a mountain,” Curry-Sartori said.

Conard student Mughda Gurram also spoke to the Charter Oak community, reminding them that peace is what they make of it. “It’s in your power to build peace or break it,” Gurram said.

She urged the young children not to be intimidated by amazing historical figures who have been involved in a quest for peace. “The smallest actions can have the biggest results,” she said, urging the students to start at school by not bullying or spreading rumors, or to help the West Hartford community even in small ways.

Charter Oak students also participated in the morning’s activities, reading inspirational quotes from Mahatma Gandhi, Isaac Newton, Mother Theresa, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Pope John Paul II in both Spanish and English – reflecting the school’s intercultural mission.

Two students recited the peace pledge which all of the students had signed.

The morning concluded with the planting of pinwheels for peace, which the students had created in art class last week.

Because of the construction of the new Charter Oak International Academy building, this year’s celebration was held on the blacktop at the side of the school and the pinwheels were planted along the fence rather than along the front walkway.

As the students filed into the school to begin their day, the pinwheels spun quietly in the breeze, a colorful and peaceful reminder of the morning’s pledge.

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