Clayville students ready for Harvest Festival with rebuilt 'village'

SCITUATE - With so much emphasis on what went wrong behind the Clayville Elementary School, and the destruction of the 19-year-old Pilgrim and Native American villages earlier in the school year, the positive efforts of the 85 4th- and 5th-grade students who use the villages for their social studies lessons, have survived, despite the odds.

With the help of their teachers and principal, Clayville Elementary School will hold its annual Harvest Festival on Thursday, Nov. 5, with fewer structures, but a renewed level of enthusiasm for their cherished event.

"We're ready to move forward," said Karen A. Cappelli, principal of the 200-student school on George Washington Highway, where the Pilgrim and Native American villages have flourished over the past two decades.

In a newsletter to the school community, Cappelli expressed thanks for "the outpouring of support to reconstruct our outdoor classrooms," and to underscore intentions to go on with the "memorable learning experience," on Nov. 5 from 9:15 a.m. to noon.

"It's a tradition here in Clayville," she said, a tradition planted by the late Betty Angelotti some 19 years ago with the intention of bringing a new dimension to learning. Trails were cleared on school property, grants subsequently obtained, curriculum and teacher training planned, and the classroom taken outdoors where it remained tucked in the shady woods.

Each autumn, the outdoor classroom, left standing year round, would be revisited and renewed as part of the social studies unit for 4th- and 5th-grade students. The 1600s became more than reading material by way of the touchable, livable, breathable project. It became so successful that teachers say students looked forward to it from the time they entered kindergarten.

"From the time they enter Clayville, they anticipate this," said Susan Marchetti, a 5th-grade teacher.

"When parents come to open house, they don't want to hear about the teachers, they want to hear about the pilgrim village," said fellow 5th-grade teacher, Lori Boutiette.

Immediately, she says, "we start building community from within. The 5th-grade parents help the 4th-grade parents," guiding them through the making of costumes and props. Boutiette compared that school community to the community efforts offered by residents from across the state who stepped forward to help rebuild the outdoor classroom on a recent Saturday, offering donations of lumber, materials and skills.

In the meantime, two Scituate Middle School 7th-graders charged with the vandalism were brought before the Juvenile Hearing Board and were sanctioned, said Deputy Police Chief Stephen B. Lang on Monday. There's a possibility another student was involved with the incident, he said. Because they are juveniles, their names have not been released, he said. Other than that, he said, "I have no comment."

With a portion of the rebuilding behind them, the teachers are getting back on track in preparing the students for the Nov. 5 culminating event. The way the tradition works, after much classroom study and preparation, each student is assigned a Pilgrim and a Native American identity and have a place to live for the day within one of the two villages.

They dress the part, take on the person's work skills, and live in an assigned house or wigwam in the outdoor village.

"They will be cutting fish or hanging skins," said 4th-grade teacher Cindy Gould, walking within the partially restored native village which will take longer to rebuild because of the complexity of the structures. Every attempt at authenticity is undertaken, she said.

Field trips were already made to Plymouth and to the Pequot Museum, Cappelli said.

"It's a unique learning experience. They are living the parts," and their families become involved with the experience on many levels, ranging from helping with the props to providing food, to providing fresh fish for the village.

As the actual culminating day approaches, students will begin to bring props to school, which will include the necessities of life for the people of that time period. Pumpkins, pewter dishes, iron skillets, buckets, baskets, firewood, will fill in the set. Costumes, too, are built.

"Pilgrims dressed in many layers of clothing ... Primarily it was fashioned from wool and linen cloth, with some leather," explains a packet of information distributed to parents.

Indoor classroom study includes research on woodland tribes or the people who traveled here from overseas, how they used the environment to survive, the hardships they faced, and the inner spirit required to push forward.

Teachers have made a point of pushing on with the academics while providing a comparison of their rebuilding hardships with the hardships faced by the early Americans and native tribes.

"Perseverance runs through the unit," said Boutiette, adding how she has been guiding the students through the Mayflower experience, and ultimately, how people came together to build a community.

In Susan Marchetti's classroom, a mural-size drawing of the original Pilgrim village provides a visual map for students to absorb on a daily basis.

"It's fun," she said, pointing out the various ways the social studies lessons are applied to classroom tasks, such as calculating distance, writing diary entries, reading narratives. Some students and teachers even take on the verbal accents of the times.

Every September, each outdoor village expands as the 44-day classroom unit unfolds with the intention of culminating in the November Harvest Festival. The festival attracts not only present-day students at the school, former students and parents, but also students from other schools within the state and nearby Connecticut who travel there to tour it, and learn from the Clayville youngsters.

"This is a chance for us to share with a larger audience," Gould said. "It is unique in many, many ways. There isn't a child who can't be successful in it." This year, Gould has a 4th-grade student who is the daughter of an original Harvest Festival class member, bringing the experience full circle.

"It is one of those memorable learning experiences that last through the decades," she said.

Angelotti, the teacher who set the idea in motion almost two decades ago, was quoted in a 1995 newspaper interview saying she had a sign in her classroom, "Indians always thought about the tribe," and she used it to inspire her students to think about their tribe, or their classmates, in addition to themselves.

That global message is all the more poignant this year as the students come together not just to learn social studies, but also, to support each other in the rebuilding process.

"There are life lessons to be learned," said Gould.

"We started with a lemon and made lemonade," said Boutiette. In dealing with the initial disappointment after learning of the vandalism, Boutiette said she and the students talked of Pilgrim and Native leaders in each village, and "what it takes to be a true leader, and how communities need to come together.

"Had we not come together this year, we would not have succeeded. It will be even more successful because of the community interest."

"We wish every unit could be this exciting," said Boutiette. "It's just an amazing day."