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Read Letters Written by First-Grade Students to Donald Trump

Letters to Trump from first-grade students in California.

The morning after the election, Marie Keating invited her first-grade students to write letters to Donald Trump. “What would you ask of our new president?” she wondered. She looked at the ten 6-year-olds gathered around her in a tight circle on her classroom floor. She saw they were tired and upset.

They talked about the importance of democracy before Keating sent them back to their desks. She went to each of them and asked what they might write to Mr. Trump. “I don’t want him to send my family back to Mexico,” one girl replied. Keating says she fought to hold back her tears: “I said, ‘Do you feel like you can ask him to not do that?’ She said, ‘Okay, how do you spell Mexico?’”

Keating took the letters to the head of Woodland School in Portola Valley, California, sent them to her mom, and later posted them to Facebook. “These kids are asking for what they need but they’re also doing it kindly,” she said. “I’m very proud of them.”

First-Grade Students Wrote These Letters to Donald Trump