NEOLA, Duchesne County — They are just 10 and 11 years old, but over the past school year one Neola Elementary class of fifth-graders found themselves coping with more of life's tragedies than many adults experience in decades.
One of their classmates died, another was in a serious four-wheeler accident that left him badly burned, one suffered a heart attack and is awaiting surgery, two had siblings fighting on the front lines in Iraq, one little girl is dealing with a serious medical condition, and their teacher experienced the loss of four members of a family who lived next door when their lives were lost in a car accident shortly before Christmas.
The kids in Mary Jane Page's fifth-grade class will always remember this school year because of how they felt and what they went through together. But what she wants them to remember above all are the life lessons they have learned.
Their teacher describes them as "very sensitive and very tight-knit. Even if someone irritates them, they are tolerant of each other. In P.E. and softball they never want to 'take points' to see which side wins."
Together they sang at the funeral of Chalisa Arrowchis, the classmate who died unexpectedly on Jan. 30, when she went to sleep and never awoke. And together they each placed a rose on her coffin.
Page has gently worked with her students to help them develop healthy coping skills to face their challenges and trials. She has let them talk and write about things that matter to them. She has interlaced the curriculum she has taught this year with ideas to help inspire hope.
Along the way she obtained a Service Learning grant which paid for the trees and flowers her class planted recently to stand as a memorial to Chalisa and to remind them that no matter what twists and turns life may take, hope springs eternal.
"Through my years of experience I have come to realize that hope is the key to dealing with emotional distress," Page related. "By planting trees that blossom around the school and around the Neola Rodeo grounds, a place where the community gathers during the summer season, we will be reminded of the hope that should grow within us."
Last Wednesday the class and several parents planted a tree in front of Neola Elementary and surrounded it with flowers that will produce blossoms of Chalisa's favorite colors of purple and red. At the rodeo grounds and Neola park, each of Chalisa's 27 classmates had a flowering plant they carefully tended as it was transplanted into the damp soil.
Chalisa's grandfather, Smiley Arrowchis, watched with a tear in his eye as the work was in progress. The living memorial to the granddaughter he and his wife raised since she was 3 years old will fill him with a sense of happiness and sadness, he said.
It wasn't until after her death that her family learned how she quietly took it upon herself to help out kids at school who didn't have money on "sucker day" or who wanted a Gatorade or who didn't have pencils or paper.
"She had her own little charity ring, and we never knew anything about it," related her grandfather. Together Chalisa and Smiley saved coins in a large jar. Smiley made all the deposits with his loose change, and Chalisa made all the withdrawals to help fund her habit of helping others.
"During Christmastime the school has a little fair where the kids could buy gifts for their families. She would see a child who didn't have the money and she would buy the gift for them.
"She couldn't understand how people could be mean to each other. She couldn't grasp it, she couldn't accept that, she struggled with it. She was 11 going on 50," he said.
The friends Chalisa left behind have pledged that they will never forget the little girl who loved horses and camping and before she left for school always lined up medicine for her grandmother Melody, who has cancer. Before they planted the trees and flowers, the kids in Mrs. Page's class compiled a book of memories. They wrote about how talking about the events that marked their year helped them, and about hope. "As I grow and get older I can bring my kids to the trees and tell them of my fifth-grade memories," expressed Colton Duncan.
Chalisa's very best friend, Shayla Summarell, said that knowing Chalisa taught her to "be friends with everybody." Writing her reflections of fifth-grade she contemplated, "So, this year has been very hard. But as I can watch the trees grow that we have planted, I can remember how life can be beautiful. I will remember the people I lost this year. I can smell the blossoms of the trees in the spring and remember how my best friend loved beautiful things."
Tyson Laundry is the class member who spent six weeks in the Intermountain Burn Unit suffering from severe burns and muscle damage when his four-wheeler flipped over on him just before the Thanksgiving holiday. He has realized first-hand how fragile life is and how the thing called "hope" really works when he offered these words: "Yes, it has been a hard year. But it has been getting better. I am healing and getting stronger every day. So is everyone else, in their hearts."
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