Saved up my nickels and dimes? Check. Compiled my shopping list? Check. Cleared my calendar? Check. Geared up my appetite? Well, duh.
I'm ready. Are you?
On Friday, May 21, the Brigadoon-like B.F. Day Village emerges not from thick, haunted mists but with frenetic activity and creative enthusiasm echoing down the halls of Fremont's public elementary school.
Once a year, each classroom takes a business - like Paper Planet - where students apply for jobs, fill out time cards, design and make products, display and advertise same and then, on the magical day from 1 to 3 p.m., they sell their wares to all willing shoppers.
Get out of my way!
For the stationery store, the "workers" made high-quality greeting cards, crowns, samurai hats and invisible ink kits.
My favorite, though, is the book of poetry - written by the kids themselves. Each child wrote a cinquain, limerick and haiku poem and may, if time allows, do either one shape or free form. For writing them, the students in Michele Malo's third-grade class receive work credit at a value of 10 B.F. Day dollars an hour.
Rather than yet another tedious classroom assignment, this becomes "work" with standards of quality. The "company" contract states that workers will be on time and must put forth their "best effort." The students themselves wrote the contract, as well as sign it and, from what I've seen, adhere to it.
The Paper Planet has hot competition, however. The Toy Store next door has more than 11 products - including jean purses, word-search puzzle books and wooden cars - that appeal to shoppers' less-intellectual tastes.
Then, we have Village Pizza and Le Chateaux de Gateaux (a French bakery) to appeal to our even baser cravings.
Remember though, all of this amazing effort and creativity starts and finishes with kids in kindergarten through fifth grade. Their mini-mall of shops line the wide, wooden halls of B.F. Day, where student-ownership is evident.
Students choose the products they make. For instance, those of the pizza restaurant (Ms. Sawyer's fourth grade) want to have flowers to decorate their tables - and they contact the Garden Gazebo (Ms. Raymer's second grade) to contract for flowers as a promotional placement. The students prepared an advertising presentation to sell the collaboration to their "colleagues."
The students learn how to run a small business or, as one third-grader told me, they learn "how to be a grown-up." They learn the work required to run each business, and in some grades, they write job applications, go to an interview and need references from their fellow workers.
For fourth-graders, WASL-ing this spring, the creative release of product fabrication and business planning in the afternoons provided a welcome change.
Teachers (and good friends) Janet Raymer and Janet Sawyer coordinate this ambitious enterprise. They pull together the staff, and the kids' ideas, into a cohesive (although often chaotic) event.
While they try to be Re-respectful - finding ways the school can reuse, reduce and recycle props and materials - they also buy supplies as demands require. A week before the event, the two went scampering around Fremont, to distribute posters and rally support - and beat the bushes for customers.
More than 100 people, most of them past attendees, receive invites, although everyone interested is welcome. Greeters, including Denise Fogelman, who originally began the Village back in 1996, stand ready to sign in shoppers at the front doors.
The bank happily makes currency exchanges at a rate of five B.F. Day dollars to every $1 U.S. currency.
This year, they plan a Village catalogue, advertising the businesses (12 in all) and their extensive product offerings.
Shopping list in hand, I plan to hike up to the B.F. Day Village and show my support with every penny I can scrape from between the ribs of my piggy bank. I believe in supporting my community, and this beats attending contentious community meetings any day!
Kirby Lindsay lives, works and attends far too many meetings in the Artists Republic of Fremont. She welcomes your comments on her biweekly column at fremont@oz.net.
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