K-12 comprehensive

How to understand that strange species called children? For nine months of the year, they’re quarantined in their classrooms, known to those of us not responsible for them as the creatures who emerge from the yellow buses while we wait impatiently. But school ends this week for public schools and some private schools, and now those children not off to camp will roam the parks, streets, malls and movie theaters. And yet in their coltish play resides tomorrow’s future; eventually those of us fortunate enough to shrivel into old age will one day be at their mercy. Staff writer Chiara Canzi set out to learn more about this fresh generation, targeting 13 (well, technically 14), a student from each grade to create a representative composite of local students in schools both private and public. She interviewed the children about their academic challenges, triumphs and professional aspirations—which, if achieved, means you are reading about future veterinarians, therapists, fashion designers, professional athletes and, possibly, the next President of the United States. Of course, they’ll have to finish their homework first.—Will Goldsmith

 

KINDERGARTEN

Sarah Willingham

Age: 6
School: Mountaintop Montessori

What do you like most about school?
I like to go on the playground and I like to have lessons, that’s one of my favorites. I like my language lessons. It’s not about languages, but it’s about reading. Some of the words are hard for me. Math is really hard for me. We don’t learn about history here, we learn about history in the older classes.

What do you want to do when you grow up?
I don’t know yet. I have not decided. There are lots of things that I want to be in life like a lifeguard or a doctor or nurse, something like that.

What is your favorite lunch at school?
I like egg noodles and sesame seeds. My dad cooks that for me sometimes and it’s really good. In school, today for snack there was banana with cereals, but I didn’t want to eat the bananas because I don’t like bananas.

What is your favorite book?
I just like to read new books, easy books that I have never read before. The last one I read was one called A Baby’s First Book. It’s about what people like in the morning, like the caterpillar says get up and the clock says get up.

What do you do in art class?
We have to listen to the art teacher, her name is Emily. There is one specific shelf that we are allowed to pick from in art. In gym, there are you know those big balls and you sit on them and you bounce.

 

FIRST GRADE

Eve Keesecker

Age: 7
School: Venable Elementary

What is your favorite subject?
Science and history. Science I like it because you get to do experiments. And then history I like because you get to learn about people who lived long ago and what they did and how they lived.

Do you have a favorite time in history?
Maybe when the Titanic was around because I have this book out of the series the Magic Tree House and there are these two characters named Jack and Annie who go into the tree house and make a wish to go into a time. So I just like how they travel in time.

What activities do you like doing at school?
I really enjoy doing music. I play piano and I like when my teacher from music lets us play with instruments. And I just bounce. I like when we play with the xylophone.

What is your favorite lunch at school?
Big Daddy’s cheese pizza. It’s served only on Fridays and sometimes you get a side of ice cream. And sometimes the pizza is really large and I just love pizza! I really love pizza!

What do you want to be when you grow up?
I sort of want to be a teacher. I want to teach how to make quilts and I like sewing. I teach my brother how to read and his ABCs. And then we just like to make up songs and run around and play.

 

SECOND GRADE

Lamont Bullard

Age: 8
School: Jackson-Via Elementary

What do you love most about Jackson-Via?
I love how [the teachers] don’t get angry at me so easy. If I’m doing something and I do something wrong, they say, ‘Try again. Don’t give up, just keep trying.’

What do you want to do when you grow up?
I want to be a therapist. Someone who helps you think of things, like when you’re adopted or something. That’s what kind of therapist I want to be. I do very well with children.

What is the most important thing you’ve learned this year?
It’d probably be, if someone is getting on your nerves, just walk away and don’t get—don’t like, get angry at them again. Just walk away and be like, ‘All right, it’s just a problem and it’s over.’

What do you carry in your backpack?
Books are all that’s in my backpack. There is an animal book that is thick, two other books and these two other books that I got from the library. That makes five books, and then there is my work study folder and my work book, and then some homework and some papers, my glasses case. No cell phone, but my brother, who is 12, has one.

What is your favorite nonfiction book?
Most true books are about animals. Monkeys is what I really like. There are so many monkeys that you can think of. I went to Ohio to see my mom’s dad and we went to the zoo and they had howler monkeys, they can be heard from 20 miles away. They are so loud. They can get big. Chimpanzees are my favorite. When they make noise, their teeth are showing. And baboons. I don’t know how monkeys are so smart!

What do you want to learn next year?
I want to learn more about Egypt. I want to learn how many pyramids there are in Egypt. You know when you go inside a pyramid it’s kind of hard and tricky to look around? That’s one thing I want to learn. How did they build them without getting lost. When they built it and they were down inside, how did they get back out?

 

THIRD GRADE

Maggie Weber

Age: 8
School: Charlottesville Catholic

So what do you like most about going to Charlottesville Catholic School?
I like it because I get an opportunity to be in a show and have fun. And I also like CCS because there are nice teachers and they encourage you to learn more. My favorite subject is gym because you get to run around and my favorite game of all is dodgeball.

What shows have you been involved with at school?
We did this play called Aladdin and I was in ensemble, but being in ensemble is pretty fun, too. It was just so fun because you get to wear colorful costumes and you get to be on a stage and I’ve never been on a stage until this year. I like singing and dancing and having fun and all that kind of stuff that actors do.

What do you want to do when you grow up?
I want to be a veterinarian or a fashion designer. A veterinarian because I love animals—dogs, mostly dogs. I love animals because they’re sweet and I’m sad because we’re losing our polar bears. Fashion designer, because when I see cool stuff in magazines, it just is very pretty. I like to wear my mom’s high heels.

What advice would you give students who are entering 3rd grade?
You have to expect that teachers are going to be more hard. If you are stuck on two plus two, they’re not going to be, “Ooh, that’s four” or something. They’re going to give you clues to the answer, but not the answer.

How much time do you spend on homework every day?
If it’s on Tuesdays, I have to write 10 sentences with my spelling words and that takes a long time. It takes about 30 minutes. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and Fridays, it’s about 15.

 

FOURTH GRADE

Arianna Nixon

Age: 10
School: Paul H. Cale Elementary

What is your favorite subject?
I like science and social studies. Science to me has to do with different aspects of nature and different chemicals. Sometimes I’ll play in the bathroom at my house. I like chemicals and I like mixing.

In history, we just finished Jamestown not too long ago. We went to Jamestown, which is actually a really long drive, but we had fun.

What do you want to do when you grow up?
I kind of want to be a veterinarian, because I like animals and I care for different kinds of animals and I still want to learn about other animals. I have a cat, her name is Diamond. If I don’t end up being a vet, I might want to become a doctor.

Where do you want to go to college?
I kind of want to go to UVA. It seems like a cool place and it’s not too far from where I live, actually. Both my parents went there, so that’s why it’s a little special to me.

What advice would you give a student who will enter 4th grade next year?
I would let them know that the math might get more complicated. You have to pay attention because our teachers in 4th grade get a little more strict.

Three words to describe yourself:
I love this question. One would be adventurous. Sometimes I get lazy, but sometimes I do like to go out and play in the backyard. Excited. I get excited a lot with everything that my family does. We have to travel for my dad’s basketball team a whole lot, the Charlottesville Dream. And fun.

What’s in your backpack right now?
I carry a few books, a cell phone, there is a bracelet that I got for my birthday in there.

What are your favorite activities in school?
One is going to gym. I like to run. I don’t really like music all that much, but I love art. I like to paint. Our art teacher showed us how to make prints where you have to put ink on a picture and you have to roll it out and the picture will print on a paper.

What is the most important thing you’ve learned this year?
I would say math as a subject. I don’t really like math all that much, not everybody does, but I think it’s going to help me later on.

 

FIFTH GRADE

Kaysean Allen

Age: 11
School: Woodbrook Elementary

What is your favorite subject?
Math. My whole family loves math. Every year I’ll get a A+ or A++ in math.

What do you want to do when you grow up?
I want to be a football player, a professional football player, but if that doesn’t work I have a back-up plan, which is engineering, and if that doesn’t work I have another back-up plan, I’m going to be in the army.

I’m a pretty good football player, I pretty much fit in all the categories, I can be anything. I can be a quarterback, a tight end, a defensive line, a running back, a wide receiver.

Do you have any idea where you want to go to college?
Ole Miss. They have good dorms and a lot of football players have graduated from there so I’m thinking since a bunch of football players graduated from there, I might be another one of those football players who can graduate from there and go to the NFL.

Next year you will be in middle school.
It’s scary. It’s scary because you’re with a bunch of new people and you’re like, the littler kids. You get to meet more people, it’s not just younger kids, it’s older kids. Now we are in 5th grade, we don’t have any older kids that we can look up to and when we go to middle school, we have older kids to look up to.

Do you have a Facebook account?
I have one, but I really don’t get on, because there is really nothing to do there, just look at other people’s friends and photos. It’s boring.

What are your plans for the summer?
I’m doing this thing at Jack Jouett, this math program. I have to do it for two weeks. We go there every day at six o’clock in the morning and we leave at one. Math all day. Except lunch and then we go out for recess.

What is one thing that matters to you the most in life?
My mom. Because my mom—she’s nice, but she can sort of be a little mean when I need it. If I’m doing something that I’m not supposed to do, she’ll just come over and say, “You’re not supposed to be doing that” and I’m like, “O.K.”

I really don’t like to do it but I kind of listen to her every once in awhile.

What do you think we should do to make the world a better place?
Help homeless. And right now we could help Japan, which we are doing.

 

SIXTH GRADE

Jabari Gomez

Age: 11
School: Joseph Henley Middle

Do you like school?
Yes. I like school because it makes you smarter and if you have kids, the mistakes you make in the past you can tell them about so they won’t make those mistakes.

What do you want to do when you grow up?
I want to be a scientist, a scientist that builds things like rockets, time machines or something like that.

Do you know where you want to go to college?
I want to go to college at either Yale or Harvard. My mom says the only way to get into those schools is to work hard, so I am working hard.

What are you excited to learn next year?
I want to learn Spanish or French. It will give me GPA points to go to college and I just want to really learn a different language.

What is the last book you read?
I Am Number Four. It’s about this boy who comes from a different planet and he is trying to get away from aliens that are trying to kill him. He has special powers. It’s really fun.

What advice would you give someone who is entering 6th grade in the fall?
Study. Really study because 6th grade is already hard and when you go to 7th grade, it’s only going to get harder. Be obedient.

What matters most to you?
Family and nature. You have to trust your family. Nature, we have to save the environment, because we are destroying the planet with all the gas and that stuff.

 

SEVENTH GRADE

Lauren Kearns

Age: 13
School: The Village School

How do you like The Village School?
I love it. Just because it’s like smaller, which is usually a good thing and I like how personalized it is. All the teachers really know you, and I really like all of the extracurricular activities, art, drama, p.e., or dance or music.

What is the last book you read?
Maximum Ride. So I’m usually not into fantasy/science fiction, but all my friends have read this book and they were like “Lauren you need to read this book.” So I just got it from the library and read it and surprisingly liked it. It’s not very well-written compared to other books I’ve read, but the plot was really interesting.

What do you want to do when you grow up?
Well, when I was little I wanted to be a marine biologist and I knew every fact there was to know about sharks, but now I’m really scared of them and don’t want to go into the ocean. I think I might want to teach little kids or run a day care.

What do you do with your friends when you are not in school?
I play a lot of sports with my friends. Monday I play lacrosse, which is with my friend. Tuesdays I do yoga, which is with my friend. Wednesday I play tennis with my friend, Thursday I do lacrosse with my friend, Friday I do tennis with my friend, Saturday I do tennis and soccer with my friends. Sunday I do lacrosse with my friends.

What do you like about sports?
Partially the social aspect, which is good to get to see your friends and play with them. And then, I don’t know, I like scoring goals. Compared to most people I know, I’m not competitive at all except against my sister. But I just like the satisfaction of like scoring a goal.

 

EIGHTH GRADE

David Cohn

Age: 13
School: Buford Middle

How do you like Buford Middle School?
I have enjoyed my time at Buford. I have had good teachers and a lot of support from the school. What makes Buford such a good school is the teachers and staff.

You were a page with the General Assembly this past year. How was the experience?
That was a great experience. I worked in the Senate as a page for Senator Creigh Deeds. It’s a program they do every year with 40 kids from around Virginia. I learned a lot.

What do you want to do when you grow up?
I am not sure yet. It feels a little early to think about what I want to do, but I am sure I’ll figure it out along the way. If I have to guess, it will probably be business, law or politics.

Next year you will be in high school. What are your expectations?
I believe it’s going to be a lot of fun. I am quite looking forward to high school. I know a lot of people who go to Charlottesville High School, and I am definitely looking forward to it.

What are some of the activities you were involved in this year?
This year I was part of the school orchestra and also the school band and that was a lot of fun. I enjoyed them both and I have learned a lot from both.

Did you play around the state?
Yes. This year and last year, I was part of the Junior Regional Orchestra, which is in different places around the state. The Buford Orchestra also played in a competition in Williamsburg. We came in first (place).

What advice do you have for someone who will enter 8th grade this fall?
Be prepared to work harder than you did when you were younger. Just be prepared, and have fun.

What is the last book you read?
The last book that I read was Persepolis. We just finished that for our English class. I enjoyed it. I thought it was a good book and I was happy to read it.

What is the most important concept you have learned this year?
Not everything is exactly as it appears to be.

What are some of your least favorite trends?
I didn’t like Silly Bandz that much. I remember last year there was this marker that you could supposedly write on yourself with and you would be fun and everybody started doing that. I didn’t like that at all.

 

NINTH GRADE

Drew (left) and Jay Gaffney

Age: 15
School: Monticello High

What are your plans for the future?
Jay: I want to work with my dad. He’s a Realtor and the CEO of Real Estate III.

Drew: I kind of want to do the same thing as him, but I also want to go out and spread the word of God so other people can learn the good news and how there’s always someone to turn to.

Where do you want to go to college?
Drew: I want to go to college, major in economics. I want to go to Notre Dame, because it’s a Catholic school.

Jay: I want to go to college, not sure where yet, but somewhere I can play Division III lacrosse. I like UVA, unfortunately they’re a Division I school and that’s hard.

What do you think is the most difficult part of being in high school?
Drew: I feel like you’re looking for a group to have a positive influence on you and go down the right path. I think that’s different from middle school where everyone’s kind of friends but then this is where you break off from good vs. bad choices.

What are your favorite books?
Drew: Probably To Kill a Mockingbird. I read it in the 7th grade and it was just a great story and I am looking forward to reading it again.

Jay: I like the Percy Jackson series. There’s a lot of action, so it grabbed my attention in the first book.

Blackberry or iPhone?
Drew: iPhone, definitely.

Jay: I agree. iPhone.

 

TENTH GRADE

Rachel Needham

Age: 15
School: Renaissance School

Why Renaissance School?
I love Renaissance School. It’s really arts oriented, but at the same time they really nurture a sense of learning in every way. When I was in 8th grade, there was a girl who was graduating and she said at school you come with a question mark and leave with a period. And at Renaissance, she said you come with a period and leave with a question mark. I think that completely sums up Renaissance School.

What inspires you right now?
Natalie Portman is really inspirational to me. She did amazing things in science when she was in high school and then she went and studied psychology at Harvard. She’s so successful and she’s so level-headed. I think there’s so much pressure to be the same, especially going into college, people expect you to be the same person. Natalie Portman has this me-ness about her, she doesn’t try to be anyone else.

What are some of the projects you worked on?
In the winter, I constructed an architecture piece that was in the park. It was a walk-through gallery. I painted all the walls. It was open so you walk through 7′ walls. We woke up at 4am and were putting it up at Jackson Park until 10am. It was windy, but the structure stood. My friends came out and helped me. I couldn’t have done it without the support of my friends and teachers. It was an amazing experience.

What was the thought process behind the gallery?
We had to do an installation piece. I’ve always had this mind for doing things that are big and I’ve always had to scale down and come up with a tiny idea. I wanted to do something architectural, because I suddenly got into the idea of building things. I drew out the blueprint and worked with all the angles so when I finally put it all together, I knew the proportions. I stood for two hours in Lowe’s, milling around with no idea what I was doing. I learned about power tools, it was cool.

What are your plans for the future?
I have no plan. I like so many things. I just can’t answer it right now. I just don’t want to shut any doors. I have a plan to not have a plan until I decide to have a plan.

What matters most to you in life?
Happiness. I think making yourself happy and making other people happy. I know everyone quotes Thoreau but I’m going to quote him, “I don’t want to find myself dying only to realize that I have not lived.”

 

ELEVENTH GRADE

Zunaira Arbab

Age: 16
School: Charlottesville High

What do you like about Charlottesville High School?
I really love it at Charlottesville High School. I know this may sound a little lame but this is my social life, I love it here. I have the opportunity to do so many things, to—I mean, if I want to make a difference, if I want to do something, I can make it happen here and that’s why I like it.

What is an area of study you want to pursue further?
I’m interested in politics but there isn’t really a class here that I could take. If I think about the classes that I’ve taken this year, I really enjoyed physics. I haven’t really had much time to study it in the past but it’s my first year taking it and I really like it.

What are your plans for the future?
I have no idea. I used to know. I wanted to be a doctor a couple years ago, but now I realize that that is what every other child wants to do, and I don’t want to be like that. I want to do something different. I know that doctors make a really big difference in the world, they save lives every day, but I think you can save lives in other ways.

When people ask me that, I think of so many things that I want to do and I feel like if I choose one I’ll be missing out on everything else.

Have you thought about where you want to go to college?
I don’t know. I’m going to apply to a lot of different places so that I can have options, but I haven’t decided where. I don’t have one choice. I feel like that would be limiting myself.

What is one trend that annoys you?
Texting. I don’t text at all, I can’t. I can’t text. I don’t know how they can fully focus on what you’re saying and talk to someone else at the same time or talk to 50 other people at the same time.

What has been the most challenging lesson to learn this past year?
I guess finding a balance between school and other things. I’m trying very hard to have a social life and it’s difficult to do that with school. When you have hours and hours of homework to do, it’s really hard to do something that you like doing.

 

TWELFTH GRADE

Kevin Zeithaml

Age: 18
School: St. Anne’s-Belfield

What did you like about your school?
STAB has unbelievable faculty and I have not had a class there where I didn’t feel like the teacher was completely committed to not just the success of the class, not just the success of the school, but to my success.

What activities were you involved with in high school?
I was class president all four years and then co-school president this year. It’s been an unbelievable experience. That’s definitely been part of the spark that has given me this idea of politics and public service because I do like to be able to use my visions and my ideas and things and really be able to put them into practice.

What are your plans for the future?
I’ll be going to UVA next year. I’m very excited. It was my first choice. I’m looking forward to actually staying around town. I’ve fallen in love with Charlottesville and it’s going to be hard for me to leave.

Why UVA?
I’ve actually grown up at UVA. We live on Grounds, on the Lawn. My dad is a professor and so we’ve lived in one of the pavilions on the Lawn for 10 years. A lot of people ask me why I didn’t want to get out of town, because I’ve grown up at UVA and both my parents are here, and for me, it really had nothing to do with that. It was more just the idea that the education at UVA is so far beyond most.

What are you doing this summer?
I’m actually doing an internship at the Center for Politics at UVA. I haven’t had two days where I’ve done the same thing in a row. I’ve been either calling congressmen one day and then the next day I’ll be making photocopies.

Have you decided what to major in?
I’d really like to go into politics. I have, for the last five or six years, I’ve always felt that I was obligated to be involved in some sort of public service, and so I know I want to join the military. I want to join the Navy after college for a few years. But then I also would really like to run for public office at some point later in life.

Let’s say you were running for office now. What do you think is the number one challenge for Virginia?
I definitely think jobs. I think that you see that all over the country now, but I think in Virginia, originally an industry state, we are based on big business, especially along the West Virginia border. I think that’s a big deal. I think that Virginia needs to start attracting more big businesses, more large industries. The problem with Virginia is that there are a lot of regulations and laws right now that make Virginia less attractive to those kinds of businesses.

Do you want to run for president in the future?
I’ve heard jokes like people my age that want to go into politics, you know, they’ll work their whole life and hopefully one day they can be the most hated man in America. I don’t know, it’s really attractive and it’s also really repulsive in the same way.