By Amy V.T. Moriarty
Islander Reporter
The show must go on.
Technology and a resilient spirit among students and staff at Anna Maria Elementary School means Peace Day will be celebrated this year.
Virtually.
AME guidance counselor Susan Tabicman said beginning Sept. 9 components of Peace Day will be recorded and then spliced to create a video.
The video will be shown Sept. 21 in classrooms at the Holmes Beach school.
“It’s different, but the whole year is different,” said Tabicman. “They’re adapting. Our kids are really pretty resilient.”
Peace Day will open with fifth-grade students performing a socially distanced flag ceremony.
Also, Anna Maria Island Rotary Club representative Judy Rup will give a keynote address.
As they do every year, students will create art projects and write essays and poems in line with the event theme, which for 2020 is “Shaping Peace Together: Celebrate the Day by Spreading Compassion, Kindness, and Hope in the Face of the Pandemic.”
Additionally, students in kindergarten, first- and fifth-grade will sing a song and third-grade students will carry an Olympic flag — “socially distanced, of course,” Tabicman said.
The Manatee High School drumline has performed at past Peace Days, but due to pandemic guidelines will not participate this year.
Instead, Tabicman said, the drumline’s performance from 2019 “will be spliced into the video.”
Peace Day at Anna Maria Elementary began in 2002 as a pen-pal program between students at AME and students in New York City as a way to honor a pair of new classmates who had moved to the island from Manhattan following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Rup said the island Rotary Club sponsored a Peace Pole and, as the celebration grew over the years, a peace garden was planted.
“It’s really been a sweet event for the past 18 years,” she said, “I’m so glad the school agreed to keep the event active this year.”
Tabicman said changes to this year’s program began to be made in the spring.
Typically, students work on the designs for the next year’s Peace Day T-shirts in April and May, so a committee of school staff can select four designs to be printed. However, students did not design 2020 shirts last spring, when the pandemic hit.
Students who have them can wear last year’s tees, Tabicman said, adding that the school still has 2019 shirts for sale.
Otherwise, Tabicman suggested, students can wear tie-dyed or other peace-themed clothing.
Rup said that despite the different look to this year’s program, the “kids will still be engaged and learning about the idea of peace and how to bring about peace themselves.”
Inspiring the younger generation to celebrate peace, she said, is the point of the event.
Tabicman said the video will be uploaded to the school’s website at www.manateeschools.net/annamaria and available for public view after the classroom broadcasts.
Anna Maria Elementary is at 4700 Gulf Drive, Holmes Beach.
For more information, call the school at 941-708-5525.