Port Matilda students get dose of presidential education

There are a few students Port Matilda Elementary School teacher Carrie Sharkey said she thinks could be president someday.

Ian McHenry is one of them.

“He’s chatty, has a good attitude and is a very witty kid,” Sharkey said. “He’s a real hoot. … Oh yeah, and he loves hockey.”

Ian went to school dressed in a three-piece suit, complete with a blue shirt, a tie and matching pocket square.

Though he ditched the jacket, Ian did impressions of former President Andrew Jackson.

The third-grader was one of about 20 students who participated on Friday afternoon in the 10th annual project that celebrated Presidents Day week.

The Presidents’ Wax Museum was the finale of a monthlong research project for Sharkey’s class, and it was open to the public and attended by most students’ families.

Sharkey said she incorporated the presidential election into class lessons this year.

“We started out studying different presidents and watching a video,” Sharkey said. “But we also looked into the election process, and how they can be a part of it.”

Sharkey said two of the class themes included history on the right to vote and responsibility of voters.

“We talked about why people vote, what you have to do to be eligible to be a voter, and that most people vote for someone based on similar beliefs to them,” Sharkey said. “There’s a lot that goes into it, but I just say ‘look, your vote counts.’ ”

She even said there are a few kids in her class who she thinks have the potential to be president someday.

“I just told them the only requirement is being a natural-born citizen, which they all are,” Sharkey said. “And they have the choice to be good leaders in the future.”

But if you asked students like Ian, and classmates Savannah Winters and Wyatt Spackman, role-playing as presidents is the only type of politician they want to be right now.

“I didn’t know much about him at first, but he had a lot of good qualities,” Wyatt said about his research on James Garfield.

There are even some similar characteristics between the 20th president and the 9-year-old.

“We’re both left-handed,” Wyatt said with a laugh. “Actually, he could write with both hands.”

Wyatt went to school Friday in a black suit and white shirt, and had a gray beard attached to his face to look like Garfield.

Dressed as the president of their choice, other students also lined the hallways and stood against the walls frozen next to informational posters they’d made about their respective presidents.

With their hands out, the students waited for a guest to tap the red dot in the middle of their hand that acted as a button to bring them to life.

When activated, the student spoke about the president he or she represented, and at the end, refroze until he or she was triggered to recite the facts again.

But Sharkey was hardly the only Port Matilda Elementary teacher to target projects on presidents.

Principal Terri Kenny said almost all teachers in each grade conducted a presidential project that students of all ages would understand.

There was an Abe Lincoln art project for the school; kindergarteners were asked to write a memo about what they would do if they were president; and in Katey Fisher and Sarah Stere’s second-grade classes, students conducted their own election.

Stere said they read a book each day leading up to Friday that helped students decide who to vote for in the Friday morning election.

“It’s just a very basic way to get them to understand what the real election is all about,” she said.

This story was originally published February 19, 2016 at 7:26 PM with the headline "Port Matilda students get dose of presidential education."