AS THE EAGLES FLY:

Taos Day School Student Literacy Magazine

Summer 2021

The inaugural issue of Taos Day School’s literary magazine shows how intrepid these students from first to eighth grades have been during a difficult, challenging year. In essays entitled “I Survived 2020!” the seventh-graders reveal just how trying the year of pandemic and quarantine was: “There were many losses that will be with us forever,” Hunter Concha sums up succinctly. “But I somehow made it.”

Despite expressions of loss, and having to work from home, the students write how grateful they are for the support of their families — kindergarteners fashion portraits of their “favorite person,” second-graders write about who their heroes are, such as their mom, their uncle, firefighters and Captain Underpants.

In “COVID blessings,” Mrs. Nola Miller’s first-graders emote in diamanté poems about spring and hope. Some other sophisticated poetry forms include limericks (“There was a fast car,/It went very far/Until it broke down/In a small town/Now it sits behind an old bar,” thanks to fourthgrader James Vigil) and haiku about all kinds of animals. Acrostic poems spell out “Injustice,” revealing concern for the year’s disquieting national developments.

Mrs. Bridgette Rivera’s sixth grade class delves into world and social issues such as the desperate plight of girls trying to get an education in Afghanistan (“Hope on Wheels” by Caitlin Ortiz) and articles about climate change, the Smithsonian Museum, Pulpi Geode, Aztecs and many Native American practices.

There are heartfelt book reviews of Eric Gansworth’s “If I Ever Get Out of Here,” and thanks to sixth-grader Kiara Quintanilla you will learn about some games that kept her and her friends occupied during the last year and a girl named Jelani Jones who started a small business by making bath bombs with baking soda and citric acid.

Listen to these eloquent voices of our youth.