I am always taken aback by a vision of people offering events bringing joy, beauty and showcase of skill. White Rock, British Columbia, Canada, started 62 years ago a Spirit of the Sea Festival, fully driven by community, to show off the beauty of the seaside town. Several Imperial Beach residents, in 1980, were inspired by the mentioned Canadian festival’s sand castle competition. Living in Imperial Beach – the sweeping beaches, historical pier and half forgotten seaside town – offered opportunity to invite professional and amateur sand castle builders to show off what they can do.  Here we are thirty one years later and the event attracts 400,000 people! It is admirable even more that it is all volunteer accomplished.

Platt College ten member team worked for some time to come up with a theme and a modus operandi how to turn the vision into a piece of sand art in only five hours. And they did.  Our students belonged to an  amateurs category “Sea Creatures”, as they did last year, and decided to sculpt a sunk boat “USS Drowning Man” over which sits a giant octopus, its arms wrapped through the remnants of the ship. What a challenge!

The team arrives on the designated spot early on Sunday morning to plan and discuss their strategy. Nine o’clock strikes and Platt group  jumps into the sand. All members are equipped with shovels, buckets, brooms, knifes, smoothers and such, especially with wide smiles and contagious enthusiasm.  It is joy to observe them work bent down in sweat  only  to see them straighten up the back every so often, shield their eyes and peruse gradual progress of their creation. Everyone has his role – bringing buckets of water, shoveling, smoothing, offering solutions, moistening the sand, sculpting details, chiseling letters… The end product is not only attractive, clever, well rendered, and quite popular  (there was an ever-present crowd around the working team expressing their support), but the judges thought so highly of the piece that Platt team was again rewarded second place in their category! What a success! Congratulation!

I think it is important to support activities offering inspiration and good time. This time our students were the one bringing joy to many festival participants, at least several thousands of them. The beauty of the California beach, the surf, the sun, the happy crowd and hardworking competitors made of  ordinary July’ s Sunday one joyful, memorable summer day. We are glad Platt contributed to the summer beauty with its own talent. Congratulation!

The glory goes to: Victor Silva, Otto Lai, Janie Johnson, Carrie Ann Caranci, Krysha Brzuza, Geoffrey Canady, Alana Brannon, Adriana Aguiar, Erica Miller, David Wagner, Gloria Aguilar.

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Every five weeks or so we  like to put up at Platt courtyard a celebration of various events. In June we celebrated nothing more than the arrival of summer! We wanted to make one ordinary  Wednesday into a special and enjoyable Wednesday by dressing our courtyard with colorful  baloons and several canvases with fine art for inspiration, and  by offering a nice snack of muffins, tasty lemonade and fair-trade delicious coffee.

I love to listen to our courtyard’s happy buzz  – loud talk, background music, laughs…. I love as much the scent of coffee  in  the air and to observe our students huddled over  baskets full of muffins…  It sets a pleasant tone for the day not only for the students, but as much for us, the teachers and administrators.

We all  share one purpose: To offer to our students the best ambiance for their education and to offer them an opportunity to enjoy their school life.  We hope that eveyone enjoyed!

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There is nothing more pleasant than to hear children’s laughter at our college courtyard! It brightens my day  to hear “Good Morning” sung in unison by twenty two third graders smiling from ear to ear when  our Photoshop teacher Terry Warner shows the kids the  tricks and magic of that imaginative software. “Can you make the girl a purple mustache?” “Of course!” And once the mustache appears on the display the kids  giggle and laugh so loud that our students cannot help but burst in laughter, too. The beauty of child’s innocence and the  ability to play and enjoy is contagious!

It is our second year we invited Grande Vista Elementary School third grade students and their devoted, effective and creative  teacher Marilyn Possela to Platt.  How did it all come about? Our English teacher Lynda Felder goes to elementary schools (within Old Globe reading program) to read to the students stories, and the children, inspired by the read stories, write about the characters and illustrate them. Once Old Globe ran out of money for the program we offered to publish the stories with the illustrations in a booklet form that goes home with each child. So – an idea came about to invite the students to a college for a fun field trip.

And the children were fascinated. Of course! We teach animation that they love, we devise websites that they visit, we create creatures for video games that they love to play, we can make things disappear and reappear, we can make people look funny, we can take a picture of our children-guests and make the picture into a postcard sent from  Hawaii, Japan, Paris or London…We are a school of magic for an eight year old child. A child wanting nothing more than to be lost in the world of fantasy and make-belief, magic and beauty.

We showed them all we are about and explained what it is to be a college student, what it is to set goals and what it takes to fulfill them. The third graders were truly fascinated. I am glad they were. I am glad we were able to put concrete images to an abstract word as “college” is. I am sure at least one of them came home that day and said at the family table: “I think I will study at college”. And his or her mom smiled to herself and perhaps did not even realize that maybe, just maybe that day at Platt one small child from Tierra Santa Elementary School may slowly albeit unconsciously work toward an already set goal. To study something fun at college!

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I am still at awe that Platt College sent  $3,100 to Japan! Japanese people are close to our heartas we discovered on our  Platt trip  to Japan not only the physical beauty of the islands but especially the uncommon personality Japanese have. They may have had a tough past but what we have experienced was unmatched: sophisticated, humble, polite, informed and sweet people who consistently pay respect to each other and they cherish their visitors.

We contacted Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and Park and were happy to receive immediate reply with “thank you” for expressing our solidarity and supporting peace by wanting to send over 1,000 origami paper cranes to the Museum.

Just to imagine that people in various corners of the world share the desire to support peace by sending cranes to Japan  folding them patiently, hunched over the small shiny sheets of paper to finish the job. Folding origami brings peace of mind and offers a quiet time to reflect – something we forgot to do as we  rush from activity to activity.. . We have become impatient – even the fastest computer is not fast enough, and we forgot to seek silence as we like to be surrounded by constant  attractive stimulant for our senses.  Folding origami offers a quiet reflective moment.  We at Platt, had all chance to practice our patience and spend time to do something without any modern elaborate tools used so often for leisure time.

April 21, 2011 during our Courtyard Celebration of Earth Day Platt students will help to string our 1,000 cranes to have them ready for the shipping to Japan.

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What a HAPPY DAY was this seemingly ordinary Wednesday!

Today we have successfully launched  a week long campaign,  Solidarity for Japan, a celebration of good will, an opportunity  to show our empathy and to offer some help for Japan. What a day! Only in one and half hour we raised $422! Our students were fantastic!

What did we do? We decided to run our own Platt am/pm Courtyard Shop. We involved everyone in selling, buying, entertaining, helping  to raise as much as we can. Solidarity means to care of others. And we all do care about Japanese people.

And our happening was an answer to an article from New York Times:

“Teachers once were “citizen teachers”, as well as classroom specialists. They informed students of public affairs, helped prepare them to be effective citizens in careers as well as communities, and were leaders in communities and the larger society. As this civic purpose has drained from the vocation, society has been impoverished and teaching has lost authority. reclaiming the civic purpose of education is crucial to the revitalization of America, in every arena.” (Harry C. Boyte, NY Times 3/13/2011)

There are schools and teachers who do understand that a college has to offer not only bare content of curriculum, but must direct its students toward  avenues full of inspiration and  must present to students opportunities to grow as  members of the (world) or (city) or (school) community.

Thank you my students. teachers. colleagues, what a happening Platt witnessed today – a lively courtyard swarming with people, everyone’s hands full of goodies from our “shop”, everyone happily chatting, munching, and enjoying.

Thank you again and see you in the courtyard!

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