Friday, June 14 will be Johnson Elementary School’s last last day of school. The school, which is Natick’s smallest, will be shutting down at the end of this school year due in part to its lack of ADA compliance, a couple years of declining enrollment, and the high cost of bringing the building up to code. Although Johnson’s time as a school will end, students and staff are working to ensure that the community’s memories of the school remain.

Earlier this school year, the Johnson Parent-Teacher Association and some administrators approached the school’s librarian, Charleen Belcher, and asked her if she wanted to spearhead a project to document memories, artifacts, information, and more about Johnson. Belcher agreed, and the Johnson School Legacy Project was born. 

Belcher grew up in Norfolk, Mass. and attended its one elementary school. The town eventually closed that school and built a new one on the same property. However, before they closed it, there was no fanfare. It was simply gone. Belcher wishes that her hometown had provided one last walk-through of her alma mater, and a chance to reminisce. She had memories that she wanted to be documented, such as her favorite elementary school teacher, Mrs. Dardi from first grade, who helped her young left-handed self tie her shoes.

The gap that was left from the unceremonious closing of her elementary school makes Belcher all the more glad that the Legacy Project will prevent Johnson from disappearing the same way.

“[This type of project is] one of those things that I think districts kind of forget about,” Belcher said. “They’re so focused on, ‘Well, this is what we need to do monetarily, and it works out for us, so let’s just close the building.’ They kind of forget about all the memories that are still in there that people want to share and have documented [for] generations from now.”

The Legacy Project is a collection of interviews with alumni, teachers, and one parent; facts about and photos of Johnson’s past and present building and grounds; a timeline of Johnson history; memorabilia and yearbooks representing many decades; and more. The final product will be in the form of a website, and physical artifacts will be stored at the Natick Historical Society. 

These physical artifacts include a dictionary that an alum got in third grade in 1956, and has hung onto all these years, hoping that it would end up somewhere someday. Through this project, it has found a home.

Students play huge rule

Johnson students themselves, especially the graduating fourth grade class, are playing a huge role in these manifold aspects of the project. Groups of fourth graders have conducted interviews, edited the film of these interviews, conducted research about what has and hasn’t changed inside and outside the Johnson School building, taken pictures inside and outside of Johnson, created a digital timeline (including renaming photos and placing them in chronological order), and more. The fourth graders were sorted into these groups based on their top choices of how they would like to contribute.

The Legacy Project also includes reflections written directly by current students; this is how second and third graders participated. Each second and third grader made a Google Slide about their favorite Johnson memory. The second graders had never even logged onto Google before this project, but have picked up Google software skills through this hands-on learning.

Allowing students to individually influence the project—and to choose their top ways to do so, nonetheless—reflects the personalized attention to and understanding of students that results from Johnson’s small size. For many, this characterizes the school, and is what they will miss about it the most.

“That’s just the kind of place Johnson is,” Belcher said, describing the bonding that happens between students, teachers, and families as the Johnson community gathers around the school building at the start and end of the school day. “Because of its closeness—like, most of the kids walk here to school—everyone gets to know each other.”

In addition to reflecting Johnson’s culture, students’ contributions to the project have taught them impressive and necessary skills. For example, Belcher pointed out that many adults don’t have the skills that fourth graders have learned through this project, such as interviewing and video editing. Belcher expects these skills, as well as what the younger students are learning about using Google software, to help them in middle school and beyond.

Belcher also values the sense of efficacy and ownership that this project gives to students. She has given students the ability to choose things from what interview questions to ask and which pictures to take—young photographers were most excited about documenting the mysterious custodians’ basement—showing them that they are capable of making smart decisions about a larger goal. She has seen students’ confidence grow throughout this process. She has also witnessed their excitement about seeing something they did on the internet, which will always be there for others to enjoy and learn from.

“They’ll be able to access [their work on this project] and say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s me,” Belcher said. “‘This is me interviewing people,’ or ‘I edited that,’ or ‘I collected that information.’ ‘I did that, and that’s my piece.’”

High school helpers

The Natick High School students who have been helping with this project have learned valuable skills along the way as well. Sivapriya Kathiravan ’25, Sanjhbati Das ’26, and Sandra Kintu ’26, all members of NHS’s chapter of Girls Who Code, have been assisting fourth graders with video editing, creating the website, and organizing items for the website, respectively. Contributing to the Legacy Project has helped these students strengthen their skills and their understanding of what career paths they want to pursue. For instance, Kathiravan has loved interacting with the younger students, and her experience doing so has shown her that she can be a teacher in the future.

Kathiravan feels grateful to be part of this project to memorialize Johnson.

“I really wish I could go back and look at my elementary school and the [other] schools I went to like this, but I never got the chance to,” she said. “These people getting their chance to look at their school for the last time makes me feel sad, but on the other [hand], they still got to look over all the memories they had and what they took from that, and they shared out all their experiences in the interviews, which made me think about all of my memories [at schools], so I’m happy to be part of this project.”

Das and Kathiravan (Kintu couldn’t make it to the interview) hope that, in the future, the Legacy Project will be used as a reminder of Johnson and the people it served, and as an example for future similar projects.

Belcher shares these hopes.

“I would love to see that this kind of project would help people to think, ‘Oh, this is doable, we can do this. We’re closing [a] school but it still has all these memories and people want to talk about … the fun memories they had and the friendships they’ve made,’” Belcher said.

Although running the Legacy Project has been a whirlwind for Belcher, and although she has to leave the Natick Public Schools next year due to budget cuts, she is glad that she spent her short NPS career immersed in the Johnson community and cementing its legacy.

“It’s really been a wonderful experience, [and] although short-lived, I’m still glad I did it,” Belcher said. “I hope one day to run into these kids when they’re a little older and have them be like, ‘Ms. B, I remember you!’ That’s the best. To be remembered: it’s all we can hope for sometimes. And that [these students] can remember Johnson.”

More on the Johnson School Legacy Project.