The Mather Elementary School is a large brick building that sits high atop Meeting House Hill in Dorchester and was the first public elementary school (1639) in the country. Its 610 students currently come from all over the world, with a full strand of SEI classes serving Vietnamese children.
The weather was unseasonably warm when I visited, and at least two classes were doing outdoor studies. Students working with “Gardener Greg” from City Schools were collecting seeds from a smashed pumpkin and making leaf rubbings. Tamika Fluker’s fourth graders were gathering descriptive sensory words to enrich their writing. One girl bent low over a planter to sniff the soil and feel the texture of a small green leaf, while other students took seats on a play structure to write about the sights and sounds around them.
Inside the building primary children gathered for morning meeting – listening to stories and singing together. In Anh Nguyen’s K1 SEI class students were learning the “bubblegum” song, which introduced them to the names for coins and rhyming words. First graders were singing a daily greeting using sign language with their teacher, Lucy Wilson, who had learned it from a former Wheelock College intern. Second graders in Songkhia Nguyen’s second graders were playing a game with play money to practice place value.
The Mather has two full time science teachers. Denise Baszkiewicz was teaching the Motion & Design unit to 4th/5th grade SEI students, who were working in small groups to test the vehicles they’d built, while third graders were working with Kayron Wright on an investigation of the properties of water. They share use of a science room in the basement, outside of which boxes of science materials are stacked high against the corridor walls. Every inch of the school is crammed full… this same corridor also has tables set up for K1 lunches!
In gym class, fourth graders were learning to control soccer balls with their feet as they moved around the gym, stopping periodically to listen to pointers from teacher AJ Lyons.
I ask teachers what they like best about their school. Music teacher Kera Washington appreciates the collegiality she’s found at the Mather, while K2 teacher Grace McGregor says she most enjoys her school’s “diversity and focus on different cultures.” The Mather Elementary School has been around since colonial times, and it continues to welcome the children of today’s multicultural society!
Amika Kemmler-Ernst, Ed.D.
amika45@comcast.net