Episode Details

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello, and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. It is something you don't hear about very often, sixth grade students becoming published authors. But that is exactly what has happened at Riverton Elementary School. On this episode of the Supercast, we take you inside Cassie Crandell's classroom where students wrote and illustrated a picture book telling the true stories of trees surviving tragedies and natural disasters. The book was inspired by a survivor tree at the 9/11 Memorial in New York City. Meet the young authors and find out where you can now buy their book. We're here in Mrs. Crandall's classroom at Riverton Elementary, talking with her sixth graders and with her about a very special project they've been working on. Tell me about that.

Cassie Crandell:
So we started this project called The Tree of Hope, and what we did is we wrote a narrative fiction book about five survivor trees, and my students did all of it. I gave them the trees and they researched them, learned about how they survived, what they went through, and then they narrated the stories and they gave each of the trees a character and a struggle. The whole idea of this book was to create the power of hope and resilience. And then what we did is we created a schoolwide mural. So my students painted a tree, and then they went and explained the project to each class, and each student got a circle and a color that they colored or drew or something that represented hope to them, or just colored it in for the younger kids. And then we put it up on the tree. Then we invited each of the classes to come down and we read them our book about the Tree of Hope and the power of hope and resilience.

Anthony Godfrey:
So what was the impetus for starting a project like this?

Cassie Crandell:
I knew I wanted to do something. I wanted to create something with my students that would be beneficial to not only them but to our community as a school. And now it's kind of reaching out into the community, which I think is amazing. I love the tree from the 9/11, the survivor tree from 9/11. I visited the monument years ago, and I always thought that that was such a powerful story. And I feel like our kids, with everything that they've gone through and the things that continue to happen, sometimes the world can just feel really heavy. But I felt like we could create something that would be beautiful and give hope to not only my students but to the whole school and the community.

Anthony Godfrey:
So tell me how this has been organized and what the creation of the book and publishing and distribution of the book have looked like.

Cassie Crandell:
Yeah. So I essentially gave my students the idea. I told them the idea and asked them how they felt about it and if they wanted to do it. And they were really excited from the beginning. And then I picked five survivor trees. I split them into five different groups, and they got with their groups and they did everything. They did the research, they wrote the narratives. I met with them, I would listen to their stories. I gave them feedback. They met with other group