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The next day Brigid met with Amy's students in two groups of ten. She began these conversations by reminding the children of their conversations in the classroom.

Brigid: I understand you went to a memorial park earlier this week. Memorials are very important and one memorial that is very important to us in the city is the World Trade Center Memorial. Some of you were talking about it at your last meeting. I noticed that you know a lot about what people are thinking about building. It seems like there are a lot of grown-ups trying to agree on what to build. So, I was wondering, what do you think a World Trade Center Memorial that is for children might be like?

The first group seemed very confident and capable of brainstorming what a memorial could be and the elements it would include, which seemed influenced by the recent research they had done on parks and playgrounds.

Maya: When you go there you might think of the World Trade Center... you would want to think about it. In the World Trade Center they had all kinds of shops. There might be a sandbox where you could rebuild the town that was there out of sand. You could have the real signs of the stores and shapes and tools for building the stores. If I made the bakery I could get the sign to put on it and then if another boy came to build the bookstore he could get that sign.

Alex: A memorial park could be more of a playground. There could be a different world, but I think that's impossible. Another idea would be to build two towers with stairs in them and chairs and windows and steering wheels. This is an impossible one: two towers coming out of the sandbox. I have an idea about what Maya said. In the sandbox you could have a wet and dry sand machine. It would have buttons to press. You get the wet sand to build with.

Jamie: Two towers out of cardboard big enough for the class to go in. Put in a window and then put some wheels on it. And then put it in the sandbox and then push it into another sandbox.

River: I think the cardboard would collapse and then get soft and get soggy and then it would get all yucky and then plants would grow out of it.

Joachim: You could use metal steels (drawing large tall shapes with his hands). You could hold sand up on top.

Alex: Parents and caregivers would never let kids climb up there it wouldn't be safe.

Journey: How about a playground and a little bit of what Maya and Alex were saying. Stairs up and down and when you go down two different...

Alex: It wouldn't work. We'd hit trains and rocks or dirt or China. It would take a year or two to build.

The children continued to offer suggestions and assess and build upon the ideas of others. After their conversation, Brigid asked the children to draw their ideas in response to her initial question and what they had talked about as a group. The drawings revealed complex feelings and a spectrum of needs not expressed verbally in the group conversation. The drawings--such as Maya's haunted house and Joeline's underground fortress--suggested inner fears not evident in their group discussion.

Maya: It is more like a haunted house with a skeleton chamber, make-your-own-potion room, and a secret step with an automatic rescue. There is a canoe on a path.

Joeline: There is a secret trap door in a sandbox and you can go into a tunnel and in a room and stay there. But it is only for kids. And there is a rocking chair, a fridge, a bed, a big screen TV and a coat rack. Only the kids have the secret combination. No grown-ups.

Joachim's parachute jumps and Alex's drawing of tower climbers, intended to test the bravery of visitors to the park, communicated a sense of danger and the need to feel strong enough to face it.

Joachim: If you push the tower it goes round and round. These bars make the thing go around. There are elevators and stairs. When you go down the slide you land in the sandbox and in the tunnel. There is a place to jump. It's eight stories. There would be parachutes.

Alex: You go up in the towers. There are two places where there are chairs and steering wheels and there are four places to call from and you can call whoever is in the next tower.

When the next group arrived later that morning, Brigid reframed her question to address the emotional realm more directly. Brigid asked this group, "How would you want children to feel when they enter a World Trade Center Memorial Park?"

Jamila: People feel good if they have nice benches to sit and think about the parents that died. You want children to be happy because the people that died still have feelings. So, you want a place that their children will be happy so then their parents can feel happy in heaven.

Henry: Weird, sad, happy.

Brigid: What would be there to make you feel good?

Henry: A hotdog stand.

Thamyr: For grown-ups, a quiet place. There could be benches for peace.

Brigid: What would children do?

Jamila: If places were empty they would play tag. There could be bases and the missing people would be a base. They could make the missing people as memorials. They could be the bases, the fake people would be people that died and their children could run around and play tag. [The statues] could be time-out areas or home base.

Rebecca: Sometimes in the parks bands play music for grown-ups so they can rest. There could be a band to make people rest.

Jamila: But for children there could be dancing.

Journey: It could make you feel better if there was a baby park. Babies make you feel better when you hold them.

Julia: There is like a hand and there are steps for someone to walk up and stand in it. And the Trade Center would be right in the middle.

Jake: You know the dome that was in the courtyard? I saw it. I saw iron and steel and how there were holes in the dome and it showed how all this steel crashed into it. They could make a short review on the radio. There will be a show on TV to explain things. Like when you enter, after the plaques, there could be a video and movies to tell what happened.