The Story of "Togetherness"

The year was 1977. I was teaching a split fifth and sixth grade class at Adams Street School in Worcester, Massachusetts. One day I received a visit from an African-American lady by the name of Corrine Bostic. Corrine was a local author and had spoken with school administrators in the central office (Dr. John Durkin, Eugene Applebaum,) and she in turn spoke with Mr. Carroll, the school principal. Corrine was interested in working with children to get them doing creative writing. Corrine and I met together and planned what to do with the children and I carried it out in the classroom. The culminating activity was the publication of a small red-covered book entitled "Togetherness". I originally had THREE copies of this book, but I mailed one to Vincent Pedone our state senator, who was in that class and is published in the book. Another copy of the book I brought to the Greendale School library, but I took that home when the school closed and I have that at home and the other copy is my own personal copy.
Why now after 32 years am I suddenly bringing up this subject? Well, if you click on the word "COMMENT" under the last post about Walter Rodriguez, you will find out. I was sitting at my computer this morning working on my English as a Second Language Moodle coursesite when I switched to my e-mail and saw an email from a former student named Marisa Fusaro who was in this grammar school class that published this book back in 1977 at Adams Street School! I nearly fell off my chair! Marisa wrote this fabulous play entitled"The Mystery of the Missing Emerald". It runs for three pages and unless I can figure some other way, I will type it as a blog!(Maybe I can talk my daughter into doing it for me.) The next thing I am going to do here is type in the names of Marisa's classmates. I know she will look in on this (I think she is in California now.) and maybe know where some of them are living and let them know> Here it is Marisa:
Grade 5:Jean-Paul Brouillette, Anthony DiPilla,Mary Flaminio,Marisa Fusaro, Michael Hayes, Vincent Pedone,Michele Scricco,Christina Simone, ...Grade 6: joseph Ambrosino, Thomas Casilo, Christie Daboul, Joseph D'Olimpio, Maria Del Pilar Fernandez, Christine Forget, Anthony Locontore, maria Prizio, lawrence Sasso, marie Simone, Richard Simone, Jean Weldon,Teresa DiRodi, Marie MacArthur, Anthony Petrone.
If you remember, Mrs. Martello sent three kids into us for this project and her names were Daniel Suarez, David Surrette, and Joseph Tolson......That is enough for now Marisa. My fingers are falling off! I will send you an invitation to join the blog. You need a six letter password. By the way, I got your classmates names from the Table of Contents of the book. (Marisa, I edited the blog and now have the kids in the grades they were in at the time. Thank you for the correction.)(i edited it AGAIN !)