While adults were preparing to vote in the U.S. election on Nov. 5, students in the Lower School were preparing for a mock election of their own: Splat the Cat and Seymour vs. Elephant and Piggie!
The Lower School fictional book character mock election—brought to life with the help of the Lower School librarians and tech coaches—was concocted as a way for students to learn about the civic duty of voting, experience an election firsthand, and be able to identify leadership characteristics using the Stripes as a guide.
Throughout library classes in October, students in all grade levels first learned why we vote. Using age-appropriate resources such as Everyone Gets a Say and Leo’s First Vote, students “discussed the voting process, the responsibility of voting, the importance of how each vote actually does matter, and how old you have to be,” said Lower School Librarian Gretchen Simon, Hon. “We also discussed that in elections, we are not only voting for president and vice president but other government roles as well, including judges, senators, congressmen, etc.”
During their next library class, students began to delve into leadership characteristics through Elephant and Piggie and Splat the Cat books. “Every class brainstormed what makes a good leader and then, after reading the books, we would talk about qualities the characters showed and which Stripe it exemplified,” Lower School Librarian Meg Yeaton said.
“We discovered with the students that all of these leadership skills really do fall into the Stripes,” Mrs. Simon added. “For example, saying ‘thank you’ and expressing appreciation fall under the Stripe of Gratitude, and having good manners and being patient and polite fall under the Stripe of Courtesy.”
Then, in their third library election class, students in PreK to 2nd grade used the book Monster Needs Your Vote to talk about the need for our leaders to have a platform where they focus on issues or what they think needs changing, while 3rd to 5th graders used the EA’s civil dialogue MODEL framework to discuss how to have an opinion but still remain respectful of others.
Students were also assigned a character for whom they created a campaign poster, including a positive quality they identified the character as having from one of the stories. “For example: ‘I'm brave, I'll jump in the pool!’” Ms. Yeaton explained. “The posters were then plastered all around the school with all of the artwork the kids created.”
After researching the characters, understanding the voting process, talking about the character traits of a good leader, making campaign posters, and even hearing political announcements over the PA system for both ‘candidates,’ Election Day finally arrived on Tuesday, Nov. 5!
Donned in red, white, and blue attire for a patriotic-themed spirit dress-down day, Lower School students came class by class to the official voting booths, located in the Green Lobby of the Lower School. The area—decorated with American flags, four voting booths with privacy shields, and patriotic decor—was monitored by our resident poll workers: LS Tech Coaches Kim Farrell '84 and Lindsay Tedesco.
But why vote and tally paper ballots when there’s an app for that… or at least when an app could be created for that? Through Matt Memmo, Hon.’s Honors Advanced Data Structures class, Upper School students were given just such a task: to create a kid-friendly app with both the functionality to allow voting and keep a tally of the current standings.
Though students do not typically learn about web database systems in Honors Advanced Data Structures, Mr. Memmo said that he "created a crash course for them to learn the basics of web development (Javascript, PHP, CSS, and HTML) and how MySQL databases work” in addition to creating a tutor in FlintAI that they could consult while tackling this project.
After each of Mr. Memmo’s students came up with a design, the class reviewed them and picked the two which had the best functionality and features needed for the mock election. After feedback from the Lower School and some tweaking, the final design was selected.
“I thought this was a great opportunity for cross-division work and a way to have the students create something that would be used by other members of the community,” Mr. Memmo explained. “Learning about the MySQL database system is a natural fit for this class and a valuable skill set. Also, it is a good exercise for the students to be given specifications for a project from a "client" (in this case, the Lower School) and then go through the process of refining the product.”
Brandon Bin ‘26, who created one of the top designs, said his favorite part was “getting to use my creativity for the project” and that it was “really fun to just mess around with a website.”
“Since Mr. Memmo told us that we would be making these for Lower Schoolers, I kept it in my mind to make it very child-like with bright colors and fancy effects,” he explained. “For example, I made it play a 'yay' sound once the vote was submitted.” (A feature that proved to be quite popular come Election Day!)
At the end of the day, Elephant and Piggie took the mock election victory, but the victory for all was experiencing—and learning from—the election process.
“From our Lower School librarians taking the lead on ensuring Lower School students had the resources to learn about this important topic to Upper School students partnering with our Lower School tech team to create a custom—and impressive—voting app, this engaging project was a success on all fronts,” said Head of Lower School Terry Malone, Hon. “Thank you to all who made the day such a success!”