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“I want to see where Plato debated and where Homer did speeches,” she said. “I want to count how many steps are in the Coliseum. I want to go to the Parthenon. I also want to see the people and how they live.”
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Jessica Clark, 11, has a dream of building a global playground called Kids Peace Project that would bring children from around the world together in the name of peace. PETER THOMSON/La Crosse Tribune |
Clark, who attends a virtual school affiliated with Stanford University, isn’t going to wait until she’s grown up. This summer she’s going to travel to the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece and Italy. “I don’t know how,” she said. “I just am.”
It’s all part of Clark’s mission.
“I know I’m here for a reason,” Clark told her mom when she was about 3 years old. “I’m supposed to bring world peace.”
Clark, who grew up in Canada and moved to La Crosse a year ago, started small. She helped a messy kindergarten classmate pick up her wrappers so she wouldn’t get in trouble. She negotiated peace treaties on the playground. Before school, she sat and listened to classmates spill their guts about their problems.
Now Clark wants to start a nonprofit program called the Kids Peace Project. She would visit classrooms in different countries and talk to kids without the adults being in the room. She’d ask the kids about who they are and what they dream about. Then, based on the responses, she’d connect a class in Sweden, for example, with a classroom in Chicago, using technology.
“You get connected with kids who have gone through the same things and won’t be offended or upset or say, ‘It’s OK, it’s not a big deal,’” Clark said.
Clark, who moved to La Crosse because her mother’s family lives here, knows what it’s like to feel alone. She longed to meet another kid in Canada who loved playing classical violin like she did. She finally found out about another kid violinist — in Texas.
That’s why Clark wants to create a global playground, she said, a safe place to make friends, a place where kids “don’t have to duck.”
Clark’s mom, Kirsten Stellick, is supporting her daughter’s dream however she can, but it’s not always easy. “Part of what was so difficult about being a parent to Jessica was she was concerned with these big issues (such as war and peace),” Stellick said. “It’s just who she is.”
Clark’s gift is that she sees kids in ways that adults don’t, Stellick said. She’s also the kind of kid who tells it like it is — not everyone’s favorite quality.
Clark once asked her kindergarten teacher, who seldom played with the kids, “Do you even like kids? Why are you here if you’re not happy?” The teacher cried and took a leave of absence.
“You were supposed to be seen and not heard,” Clark said about school.
She once asked a teacher, “How many people died on the Titanic?” Don’t ask that, the teacher replied.
Today, Clark goes to school via computer. She loves reading, writing books, making up skits and doing anything creative. “If I don’t have something to be creative about, I lose it,” she said. “I can’t just play by the rules all the time. It gets boring. I have to make up my own games.”
Clark’s message to kids is this: “No matter what the adults say, your dreams can come true.”
She plans to be living proof.
The Jessica file
Q&A with jessica
Q: If you won a million dollars, what would you do with it?
A: I wouldn’t know what to do with it at first. I’d save it until I knew what the right thing to do with it was.
Q: Describe yourself in three words.
A: Kids Peace Project.
Q: If you had one message for kids, what would it be?
A: No matter what the adults say, your dreams can come true.
Q: If you had one message for teachers, what would it be?
A: Let (kids) learn at their own pace, not them learning at yours.
Q: If you could create your own school, what would it be like?
A: It would have kid-friendly stuff. There would be a rock wall, and you could sign up for different things during gym.
Jenny Dolan can be reached at (608) 791-8220 or jdolan@lacrossetribune.com.
Chris Pagel wrote on May 28, 2007 7:58 PM: