kids&family
The Phantom Tollbooth and Capitol Hill Day School
T
he students of Capitol Hill Day School lined
up to walk through a purple cardboard tollbooth that any reader of the beloved children’s
classic “The Phantom Tollbooth” would have recognized. One girl was dressed up as a “Which,” several
were wearing tiaras, and one boy carrying a red balloon passed through the tollbooth to hear the books
author, Norton Juster, speak about his
book. Students and teachers alike were
excited to hear from the author of the
book, now in print for 50 years, which is
still relatable across the generations.
It is fitting that he came to speak
at Capitol Hill Day School this past
month, an urban school where the curriculum is based around field trips – getting out of the classroom and into the
city. “The Phantom Tollbooth,” much
like Capitol Hill Day School’s field trip
curriculum, teaches the value of learning away from the textbook.
Writing from Experience
by Dana Bell
Knowledge – academia, in a physical form. Milo goes
on a journey to rescue the Kingdom of Knowledge
and learns the value of curiosity through the process.
“A lot of kids ask, ‘who gets the tollbooth, and
why?’” Juster said. “The tollbooth is not terribly important in and of itself. But in almost everybody’s life,
there are particular times or moments when you un-
Norton Juster went to a school like
Capitol Hill Day School. Or rather,
a school that looked like Capitol Hill
Day School. “It’s one of those things
built at some undecipherable era, some
long time ago,” he said. “I remember
that all the stairs were surrounded by
cyclone fencing. It always reminded me
of a prison.”
To that effect, Juster was like most
students. “I was not a great seeker of
knowledge. I liked reading, I liked doing things, but I didn’t like school, because I always seemed to be slightly off
key,” he said.
After college, Juster got a grant
from the Ford Foundation to write
a book about cities, but encountered
writer’s block. That’s when he started to
Students listen to Norton Juster at an Assembly. Photo: Capitol Hill Day School
write “The Phantom Tollbooth.” “I never wrote it sequentially, except for the
beginning part which tells you who Milo is, which is derstand something in a way that you have never understood it before or you see it in a new way. The only
me,” Juster said.
Milo, for those unfamiliar with the book, is a word that complements that is an epiphany.”
young boy who is not interested in anything. One day,
he gets a mysterious package in the mail – the purple The City of Reality
tollbooth. He drives his electric car through the tollThere is a chapter in “The Phantom Tollbooth”
booth and finds himself in the mystical Kingdom of where Milo finds himself in a city called Reality. Ex116 H HillRag | May 2012
cept that it doesn’t look like a city – only crowds of
people walking with their heads down, on sidewalks
with no buildings. Milo’s guide explains that the residents of Reality found they could get to places more
efficiently if they walked with their heads down and
didn’t get distracted along the way. As a result, the
city fades away.
When Capitol Hill Day School was
founded in 1961, its founders wanted
to make sure that the students weren’t
walking around with their heads down.
“The families that started the preschool
program took a good look at where the
school was located and they took advantage of it,” said Lisa Sommers, the
Director of the school’s field education
program since 1984.
The program has grown significantly since its conception – from one
bus and one driver and just a few trips
a year, it now boasts three buses, overnight trips, and over 350 trips a year.
“All of the field trips are directly
connected to the curriculum,” said
Sommers. “What they’re learning
about has relevance. They can see or
experience something or meet someone that will add a whole other dimension.” The fourth grade, for example, supplements their year-long study
of immigration with an overnight
trip to New York City. Instead of just
reading and memorizing facts about
the history of immigration, students
get to experience it by visiting the
Tenement Museum, or Little Italy’s
first pizza parlor.
“The Phantom Tollbooth” is at its
core an urban book – through Milo, the
reader discovers how to learn from your
surroundings. Through the field trip
program, Capitol Hill Day School encourages this type of learning as a way
to nudge its students closer to that moment of epiphany.
Juster describes a feeling that is familiar to anyone who has lived in a city. “You’re walking down a
street you’ve been down a thousand times and you
suddenly say, ‘How long has that been there?’ And
then you realize: it has always been there. You just
haven’t seen it.” H