Guardians of the Community
getting to know our neighbors
The theme of this recent Spring Break Camp, Guardians of the Community, brought the Wonder Kids on an adventure to explore the people and places who care, protect, and give personality to Brooklyn’s local culture. In the five mini-fields trips throughout the week, here is what they discovered about themselves and the land around them.
Lined on the grass alongside Prospect Park West in front of Litchfield Villa lay three large and colorful picnic blankets, the physical representation of an outdoor living. Backpacks outline the border of the blankets, but where are the kids? The sound of a ukulele is coming from the field of trees nearby, the guiding music for an activity where nearly twenty Wonder Kids (and some other their siblings) are hopping (literally, like spring bunnies) from tree to tree, the sound of giggling intertwining with the stringed music. It’s the first morning of the School of Wonder Spring Break Camp, themed the Guardians of the Community!
The Guardians of the Community is an exciting project of the School of Wonder, where the four integral tenets of our programming really come to life:
CREATIVITY, COMMUNITY, autonomy, and STEWARDSHIP
The format of the week is as followed: each day, the Wonder Kids embark on a mini-field trip to explore the people and places in the neighborhood who care, protect and give personality to Brooklyn’s local culture — the guardians of our community!
On this first morning, hopping from one tree to another until transitioning to the blanket-lined living room, the Wonder Kids are asked to share their name and a movement to go with their name — small but impactful moments of connection to themselves and their fellow Wonder Kids. A hope of the first day is for the Wonder Kids not only to start to understand how to orient themselves in the community, but also how to orient themselves in this new group dynamic that will be their traveling community for the next five days.
Once introductions are made and materials for the day (hidden by Gaia, the Goddess of the Earth) have been found outside the flower-lined castle of Litchfield Villa, the Wonder Kids are on their way through the streets of Park Slope to meet their neighbors — maps and compasses in hand. Whether it’s at the Prospect Park Animal Clinic, where a Wonder Kid mentions the connection between his cat having been sick and not knowing who cared for her, or at the Tarzian Hardware store where another Wonder Kid meets the manager of the store who has a daughter the same age as her, a theme throughout the day is an awareness of the overlaps and universality that people in a community can share. Although different, when in community, there are experiences that we all have in common, and once we understand what those are, we can come together with more wonder. “I saw you today and I had fun with you today,” is heard being said at the closing circle, kids not wanting to go home just yet but knowing they’ll be back tomorrow!
With this foundation of connection, the still bushy-eyed and only slightly sunburnt Wonder Kids return for day two, where the hope is to explore the connection to the ancestral lands and people of Brooklyn. In order to be adventurers in the park and the community, it is integral to know the connection between this land and its native history. Specifically in the area where School of Wonder today calls home, the Lenape people originally preserved the land and called it home. Leading part of the day’s programming, a Wonder Leader with indigenous family of this land grounds the group in the space, assisting the Wonder Kids towards a more intentional way of wondering through Prospect Park. They talk about how to harvest (pick up what has already fallen instead of what is still rooted into growing plant life); they suggest that the Wonder Kids not take too much, just what is minimal; and as they give instruction for making a mandala out of twigs, the Wonder Kids have a chance to put all this wisdom into practice together.
Having some new knowledge about the land, the Wonder Kids enter the third day with an important guiding question:
NOW HOW DO WE PROTECT THIS LAND?
To help answer this question, the Wonder Kids have a visit from Urban Park Ranger Chris who introduces ways that the School of Wonder can help protect the trees in the park. Some examples include not picking the (although very beautiful) flowers and being more gentle with small trees that aren’t strong enough yet to sustain climbing and scrapping. Since these are both things that Wonder Kids and Leaders have done on park adventures, the group gets the opportunity to practice accountability and apology for these lesson learned. Ranger Chris (and Gaia, too) accept the apologies and understand where everyone is at on their learning journeys. Ranger Chris also shares the secret on how to responsibly make fire in the park — how to collect kindling, how to get oxygen into the right places when starting the fire, and how to use the grills. With some success (and some healthy trial and error), fire was summoned! A celebratory mud puddle party ends the day, and the Wonder Kids thank Ranger Chris for the insights about Prospect Park, the adventure world they’ve been calling home for so long.
With some tiredness, a pump of resilience, and the lessons learned so far, the fourth day flips the Guardians of the Community model on it’s head and invites the Wonder Kids to look inward:
AS MEMBERS OF THIS COMMUNITY, WE ARE ALSO GUARDIANS OF THE COMMUNITY!
It’s time to take stock of what the Wonder Kids have learned and think about the ways they can support their ongoing relationship with nature and the community. Gaia offers the Wonder Kids a 10,000 year challenge that they passionately accept: if the Wonder Kids can identify and clean up non-natural trash and material in the park, they can save Gaia 10,000 years of work in the park. Quickly, teams are divided up and the Wonder Kids get to work. Using disintegration cards to tell the story of the natural index of a item they find, the Wonder Kids embark on a park restoration project that ends with them taking 22,000 years off of Gaia’s work! A huge thanks from Gaia flows through the park as a gust of warm spring wind. As the Wonder Kids leave the park, they collect leaves to make instruments, singing to the ravens flying above, the much beloved members of Gaia’s family.
On the last day of the week-long camp, the grassy fields of Governor’s Island are filled with Wonder Kids peacefully laying with the white, puffy clouds hanging above them. They are meditating, guiding by the prompt:
ENVISION WHAT THE FUTURE COULD LOOK LIKE AND HOW YOU WANT TO CONTRIBUTE TO IT.
To get to this moment, the Wonder Kids traversed bridge and tunnel, met several Guardians of Manhattan, and for some, conquered the high waters on a ferry for the first time. On the ferry, the Wonder Kids could be seen staring out towards Brooklyn, the land they have learned so much about this week. With a zoomed out perspective of the world they are growing up in, seeing that place in a new way, the Wonder Kids return home with visions of their future and memories from a wonderful week.
If you’d like to join us for one of our adventures, check out our calendar to see what we have coming up!