Kingsley fifth graders become published authors with future dreams book

More than 100 Kingsley Elementary fifth graders ended their year with a published book and their names on the cover of 20 Years Later. At the Kingsley Branch Library on Tuesday, June 9, the students celebrated the months-long project with ice cream, applause and copies of the book to take home, turning a classroom writing assignment into a public milestone.

The project came from a collaboration between Kingsley Area Schools and the St. Clair Butterfly Foundation, which has partnered with the district for two years to provide social-emotional learning techniques for students and educators. Kingsley fifth-grade teachers Amy Alger, Kaylee DeWitt, Myranda Wagatha and Chelsey Jenkins helped lead the work, which was built around future dreams and goal-setting as much as grammar and sentence structure.

The book gave students a chance to write about where they see themselves 20 years from now. Some said they wanted to become pilots, some hoped to become authors, and some said they simply wanted to keep writing. Michayla McGee wrote about wanting to become both a tattoo artist and a therapist, a mix of creative and helping professions that reflected the range of ambitions in the class.

The celebration at the library also marked a broader public recognition of the students’ work. Grand Traverse County commissioners approved a resolution recognizing the fifth-grade classes for the project and for promoting literacy and creative writing skills across the county. For a group of children preparing to move into middle school next fall, the acknowledgment made the book feel less like a classroom exercise and more like something that mattered beyond the school walls.

Chip and Lisa St. Clair attended the celebration, continuing a partnership that connects Kingsley students with trauma-informed, neuroscience-based expressive arts and emotional learning. The St. Clair Butterfly Foundation was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Michigan. Its approach, along with the school district’s classroom work, gave students a structured way to imagine a future, explain it in writing and then see that work become a printed product.

This was the second year Kingsley’s fifth grade has worked together to publish a book, suggesting the project is becoming a tradition rather than a one-time experiment. For more than 100 young writers, it left a visible payoff: a book in hand, a public nod from county leaders and a first published credit before middle school.