Early hour of brain power at CIS

How do you teach virtue? How do you build character? How do you boost brain power? Columbia Independent School is trying to do all three, all before 8:25 a.m.

Students in Columbia Independent School’s Lower School, which is kindergarten through fifth-grade, begin every school day with “Breakfast for the Brain.” But they’re not eating their Wheaties; they’re playing chess, Battleship and Stick Around.

At 7:30 a.m. Monday, for example, first-grader Kimberley Tran played Arch Rival, a board game of skill, with second-grader Courtney Beckett. Courtney, taking on the role of the older student, helped with setting up the game and playing by the rules. Although the girls are not in the same class, they are given the opportunity to interact and grow in the school’s tight-knit environment.

The idea is to get the students immediately engaged in creative and critical thinking and in working together, said Barbara Savage, director of the Lower School. The students converge in the school’s basement, decorated like a big classroom with posters and the children’s artwork on the walls. They can go to any table they like and play any game they like, with whomever they like.

“I’m trying to put together this Chinese puzzle,” Courtney said later. “But it’s hard.”

About 8 a.m., the lights were flicked on and off, and students broke apart their puzzles, folded up their board games — most of which are used and have been donated by parents — and cleaned up. All 107 of them headed next door for the “Morning Meeting” and a talk on virtues.

The school emphasizes two virtues a month; January’s are perseverance and endurance. Columbia Independent prides itself on character education and, in its overview of Lower School education posted on its Web site, www.cislions.org, says character education is as important as academics. The emphasis is schoolwide, but the Lower School does more.

The morning meeting often includes readings that encourage the virtues that are then related back to the students and their school. Even kindergarten students, Savage said, learn to connect the virtues to their lives.

On Friday, Savage read one of Aesop’s fables, “The Bundle of Sticks,” in which a hard task — breaking a large bundle of sticks — requires a group effort.

“Sometimes it would be easier to quit,” Savage told the students. “But we need to work together.”