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think, was that if the teachers could trick the students into forgetting that they were at school, or that they were doing homework, the students would be more enthusiastic about their work.
    Moreover, if the students cultivated an eagerness for school right out of the gate, then the general apathy that has its way of creeping into most students as the years go by could be staved off. To this end, each teacher was given the latitude to create his or her own themes that would run for the duration of the grade, and all the lessons in math, reading, etc., would be designed in the spirit of the theme. These themes were called “Groups.” There was a Space group, a Sea group, an Earth group, and the group I was in, Community.
    Regardless of the creativity of the curriculum, in kindergarten in the United States, aside from very basic writing skills, you don’t learn much except how to tie your shoes and how to share, and as a result of that, most of the grade isn’t very memorable. This is particularly true if you enter kindergarten with most of the writing skills that they expect you develop by the time you have exited. As one of the students who was in this position, I find that as I look back now, I remember the people fairly well, but the actual curriculum remains mostly a mystery to me. But perhaps this isn’t all that unusual.
    I do remember two things very clearly: I was the best at writing my name in the correct way, which I had mastered some time before entering the grade; and the Balloon Project, which was really the hallmark of the Community group, since it was a clever way to show how a community functioned at a very basic level.
    The concept of the Balloon Project was fairly straightforward. Each student would release a balloon with a note attached, and then would wait for a response from whoever happened to find the balloon. We would ask them to enclose a picture of their area, if possible, and provide a return address so we could become penpals. The teacher would post each picture on a large map that she had hung on one of the walls in the classroom, and this would help us see not merely how far the balloon had traveled, but how important communication was in bringing a community together.
    I remember our project being on a Friday because the culmination of weeks of discussion and preparation for this exciting event made it feel as if I was having a three-day weekend. The rocky start with which I had begun kindergarten had finally smoothed, and I talked excitedly with my friend Josh each day as we eagerly awaited the Friday launch.
    The morning of the launch, all the students walked into the classroom and saw that there was a fully inflated helium balloon tied off with ribbon taped to each desk. Our tables were laid out in a grid, and so the balloons had the same arrangement as planted trees in a lot; from the right angle they would all line up, but if you moved just a little to your left or right, they would fan out, and you could see them all again.
    We had known about this project since the first week of class, so we had known, at least abstractly, what to expect on Balloon Day. Despite this foreknowledge, however, walking into a classroom full of balloons gave the room the same ambiance as that of a birthday party, and in response, the kids behaved as if it were one.
    The balloons were all different colors, and upon seeing this, the students began bartering heatedly with one another for their favorite colors almost immediately. It took the teacher much longer than normal to organize and stifle the students, but gradually we were subdued at our desks and were asked to take out our assignments for that day.
    The preceding Friday, the teacher had sent us home with instructions to write a note with our parents’ assistance. All of the notes had to follow a loose structure, but we were allowed to be creative within those boundaries. My note read something like this:

    At the bottom of the page, I drew a little