Not A Dragon

Iplace a pile of blocks onto a table. A child asks me, “What is that?” I set out a bin of wooden mallets next to a bouquet of flowers slightly past their prime. A child asks me, “What is that?” I put out slime. I put out fabrics. I put out scoops and soapy water. Children ask, “What is that and that and that?” I put out a cardboard box. Silence. A child kicks it. Someone daring sits in it. Others wishing to be daring clamor to sit in it too. No one questions it. No one asks me what it is at all. That is because the cardboard box is magic. One of my favorite story books that celebrates this is Not a Box by Antoinette Portis where a simple cardboard box transports a playful bunny to a variety of imaginative worlds. The cardboard box is a rocket, a race car, a pirate ship and a skyscraper. It is everything but a box. So, what happened on the EEP playground when I asked Chef Todd for a collection of his sturdiest food boxes a week before the all-school Lunar New Year assembly? What happened when I gathered those boxes into a pile and taped a print out of a lion dancer in full costume beside it? That pile of boxes became a dragon, and that dragon became a bridge that connected multiple IB units and design thinking to a triumphant community celebration.

Early Preschool handled the pile of boxes first. After stacking them and sitting in them for several minutes, they took my bait— frisbees with paint. No one covers surfaces in multiple layers of paint faster than a gaggle of giggling two and three year olds, who often abandon brushes for hands, elbows and even feet. I left the detail work to Preschool. Deep into their unit of inquiry on recycling, I challenged them to cut out facial features to match the mask of the real life lion dancer using a variety of empty snack boxes and several rolls of tape. Once complete, the dragon face featured moody eyebrows made of egg crates above googly eyes drawn onto the white insides of a cut-up cookie box. It boasted rouged cheeks, the hue of Welch’s fruit snacks, and a long, orange Cheez-It box tongue. Body bling was next. I filled the sensory bin with safety scissors, paper rolls, skeins of yarn, bits of ribbon, sequins, colored painters’ tape and streamers. Well into their unit on tinkering, Early Kindergarten crafted tassels to adorn the dragon’s back. They assembled paper roll rabbits, dangling streamers from them so that they caught the wind once fastened to the dragon’s sides. They taped on sequins as scales. They cut out feet from an unused snack box and secured bright red manicured nails onto the claws because this dragon was fancy. Fancy dragons need to dance. An impromptu measuring experiment with Preschool revealed that the dragon, at five boxes long, was longer than any student and any teacher, even Mrs. Harmon, who followed strict orders to drop her clipboard of work and lay down next to the dragon because comparing her length to that of a dragon puppet with a snack box face was far more important than anything else the head of EEP needed to do. None of the boxes were heavy, but they were large, so making this dragon move took patience and teamwork. We assigned dancers to each box. We agreed to keep our dragon head and body parts in order as we moved. We blasted lion dance music through our playground speaker. And off we went! A triumphant start! Look at that dragon soar! Oh, wait. The belly is down. Oh, no. The shoulders are sagging. Oh, dear. The head is sideways. The tail is catching up. Nope, the tail has surpassed the rest of the body. The dragon is now dancing across the yard bottom first, and its head is in the wood chips, Cheez-It tongue dramatically thrown to one side. Dragon down. I repeat, dragon down.

Once we recovered, Preschool sat around the dragon to figure out what went wrong. Elle observed, “It’s easier to hold the boxes when they don’t have a bottom.” She guessed it would be even easier if there were handles as well. So, we hollowed out each box and sliced in grips on every side, big enough to fit a whole hand through. Oliver mused, “It’s hard to stay in order.” Others agreed.

“I can’t remember which part goes first.”

“I got carried away by the music.”

“It’s hard because some friends are taller, or faster or stronger.”

We wondered if it would be easier if we connected all the pieces together. I presented the case to Early Kindergarten. We attempted to perform the dragon dance with the pieces in order just as Preschool had, and when we also sat down to reflect on how we could make it better, they backed their Preschool engineers—connection was key.

“The connection has to be strong,” I offered. “The puppet can’t break apart during the dance or we end up back where we started, a dragon with a runaway bottom.” Early Kindergarten tinkerers had many suggestions ranging from hilarious to practical. More tape! Slime! Gum! Legos! Glue!

Until Isla threw her hands up to the sky and said, “You guys, what about a rope?” Hollowed out with handles and a strong rope spine, the dragon puppet rose. Dancers stayed in unison. The energy around the puppet was palpable, so we added instruments and silk scarves. Our dragon was alive, so alive, it caught the eye of Mr. Camargo as he passed by the playground. Inspired by our play, he offered us the chance to dance our dragon around the football field at the Lunar New Year assembly as an opening act to the lion dance troupe coming to perform for the entire school.

Mrs. Smith’s EK class rehearsed diligently for days. On the morning of the assembly, our dragon puppet, the culmination of a week’s worth of collaborative art with loose parts and play, soared. This project bridged Preschool’s recycling unit to EK’s tinkering unit and transformed small design failures into giant triumphs in design thinking. EEP dancers sailed it across the field, proud face first, to the applause and encouragement of lower and middle school students, teachers and celebrating families, joyfully demonstrating the transformative magic of the simple cardboard box. When we returned to the playground, I saw Preschool had pushed the dragon into the shade, flipped it, and several students were sitting inside the boxes, relaxing in their newfound oasis from the hot sun. “What have you done with the dragon?” I asked, delighted.

“It’s not a dragon,” Wilson replied. Skylar agreed, “It’s a train.”

Elle offered, excitedly, “We’re on a lazy river!”

“No, we’re camping,” Sunny added.

“These are our beds!” Ollie offered. There was one thing they all agreed on —there wasn’t a cardboard box in sight.

The first pillar of the 2022-2025 Strategic Plan challenges St. Mary’s to deliver a transformative learning experience for our students. To ensure we fully meet this goal, it’s imperative our academic program is preparing students to thrive across all divisions and, ultimately, for higher learning environments and beyond. To achieve this and set St. Mary’s on a long-term trajectory of academic excellence, we identified the need to appoint a dedicated educator to serve as our Dean of Academics.

When seeking a Dean of Academics, we were determined to find an experienced leader who would build clear and consistent learning experiences as students bridged from division to division. We have thoughtfully selected a current faculty member to serve in this role. St. Mary’s is thrilled that for the 2023-2024 school year, Lauren Sterner will be the Dean of Academics.

Throughout Mrs. Sterner’s 19-year tenure at St. Mary’s, she has a consistent, demonstrable record of success. She has been a teacher for five years in Grades 2 and 4 and has held her current position as PYP coordinator for 14 years. Mrs. Sterner has successfully navigated three IB evaluation visits and is responsible for the professional development for the IB Primary Years Programme across all of Lower School and EEP. She works closely with the EEP and Lower School Division heads to manage all curriculum. Mrs. Sterner also introduced our Middle School Dance program to St. Mary’s four years ago and today oversees our Song team.

Mrs. Sterner has successfully built a strong academic program beginning in Early Education and continuing through Grade 5. As the Dean of