Tucked into the underside of Hawlemont Elementary School in Charlemont is a little room that looks from the outside as though it should house elves or fairies. In a way it does. In this small room, fifth graders assemble colorful, magical creations. Their work area is the school’s weaving studio.
The weaving program was started in 2018 as an extension of the school’s HAY curriculum. HAY, which stands for Hawlemont Agriculture and You, is an innovative program that trains elementary-school students in traditional agricultural arts.
Working with local farmers and members of the community, the young people raise crops, tend to animals, and learn crafts. HAY partners with the local 4H program.
Jeanne Bruffee helped create HAY and was its first teacher in 2014. She has boundless enthusiasm for the ways in which this program has brought together children and adults to create community.
She said recently that when the program started she was astonished. The school got a state grant for about $125,000, she recalled, half of what the staff and volunteers estimated was needed to establish a small farm on school grounds.
Hawlemont put out a call for help and received plenty of it in the form of materials and labor.
“It was like an old-fashioned barn raising. We were able to do everything that we had in our plan, mostly because the towns pitched in,” Bruffee enthused. “I had been at Hawlemont for years and years. The excitement of the community was like nothing I had ever seen before.”
The weaving program seemed like a natural outgrowth of HAY, in which students are taught to use the products they grow. They raise sheep. It thus seems appropriate to learn how wool can be used.
Bruffee and 4-H maven Sheila Litchfield invited Susan Gruen of Heath to come teach the students a little weaving in 2018. A retired nurse practitioner, Gruen is also a master weaver.
She and her students started with one little “cricket” loom, a portable tabletop piece of equipment. They decided they needed more looms and more space.
The solution was what is now the weaving studio. Long ago it was the school’s kitchen. In 2019, it was used as storage space by the janitor. The HAY gang decided to convert the room. Again, volunteers stepped forward.
“We got people together who were supportive,” Gruen said. “We emptied it out, and we scrubbed it, and we painted it.”
Some professional help was needed to convert the room, but most of it was a community effort, she stated.
Over the years since, the weaving studio has amassed many more looms, most of them donations. Gruen entered an essay contest sponsored by the Schacht Spindle Company in Colorado.
“They awarded us 10 cricket looms and a bunch of weaving books,” she recalled. “We thought, ‘Okay, let’s expand this program.’”
She approached a number of weaving guilds, and members donated looms. The program currently has more than 30 looms, according to Gruen. It has also received donations of yarn from individuals, organizations, and businesses.
At the moment, the weaving program is part of the Fifth-Grade curriculum. Several 4H students also weave on a regular basis, and on Saturdays Gruen supervises alumni of the program who have moved on to other schools.
Bruffee explained that the program is woven (pun intended) into the fifth graders’ other studies in interdisciplinary fashion.
“Part of their history program is learning about the industrial revolution and labor laws,” she noted. “We do a year-long thing. We talk about where their clothing comes from and who might be making the clothing in that country … We hope as they get older they’ll think a bit more and they’ll read those labels.”
She explained that a successful recent addition to the weaving curriculum was a field trip to visit the historic textile mills in Lowell. Students learned about the life and work of young people in the 19th century who wove for a living.
Bruffee and Gruen are both enthusiastic about the benefits of weaving for their students. “We incorporate geography, math, history, and science. We talk about natural and synthetic yarn. We talk about climate change,” Gruen said. “And of course geography.”
She added, “It’s a way of improving kids’ fine and gross motor coordination. We also talk about color theory, thick and thin yarns, variegated yarns.”
Bruffee observed that the pandemic set the program, like much schooling, back. Nevertheless, students were able to weave a little even during the lockdown. Some were allowed to take looms home. In the warmer months, Gruen met with youngsters to weave outdoors.
Gruen said she believes that the teamwork and peacefulness of weaving have reaped great benefits for students who felt isolated and worried over the past couple of years.
I asked both teachers about their favorite weaving projects. Although it was clearly hard to choose, both mentioned the creation of purses from woven projects. Bruffee was particularly excited about the students’ samplers: large hangings that display a variety of weaving techniques.
In the future, Hawlemont may offer an adult weaving class or two, said Bruffee and Gruen. Meanwhile, the two teachers and their students are pleased with the ways in which the weaving program gives young people a tangible way in which to understand the world in which they live … and to create beauty.
Tinky Weisblat is an award-winning author and singer. Her next book will be “Pot Luck: Random Acts of Cooking.” Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.