CINCINNATI, Ohio—Second-graders at a Catholic school in Cincinnati are already working on their memoirs. As gifts for their parents, Phyllis Kemen's students at St. Mark's School create booklets sharing important insights and information about their lives—past, present, and future. A schoolwide Career Day helped inspire Kemen's students and has given them the chance to reinforce personal goals.

Clearly, these children, all African-American, are just beginning their life adventures. Whatever distinguished careers and stellar achievements they're destined to have are still ahead. So their publications are far from the weighty autobiographies typical of former presidents or retired movie stars. Rather, at only four pages, they weigh in at only a few ounces—just the right size for the young authors who have aspirations ranging from firefighter to scientist, singer to nurse, artist to manager.

Students pack their booklets with memories, goals, and photos taken with a digital camera. And, even more important, they're loaded with love for the moms and dads who receive them.

The students scan photos from the family album into the computer and create a collage for the cover of their All About Me booklet. Current photos shot with the digital camera also highlight the text pages, where students write their life story in three parts: the early years (what they were like as a baby), life today, and aspirations for adulthood. For highlights of the diaper and toddler years, the students seek out their parents' recollections.

"Family-oriented communication with parents at the dinner table is fun," Kemen says. "The children learn something about when they were younger, and the parents enjoy sharing the past with their child."

In addition to learning to operate a digital camera and a scanner, Kemen's students get lots of keyboarding and word processing practice as they compose, edit, and revise their work.

Kemen has been most surprised by some of the imagery clipped from magazines that turns up in many students' discussions of the future.

"A church, a cloud, a cross, a sunset—all kinds of spiritual things appear," in addition to pictures of policemen, nurses, and teachers, she says. Students are pondering such end-of-life issues as dealing with the loss of a loved one; failing powers of sight and hearing; and living independently in old age—issues their grandparents may be confronting right now.

Kemen—who once retired from teaching only to find that her heart was still in the classroom and came back—says of her current students, "This is the smartest second grade I've had in years."