Ask five fourth graders what they'd tell an incoming student about fourth grade, and you might expect a few rules, a few warnings about particular teachers, maybe some insight into the lunch schedule.

What you get instead — from this group at Du Quoin Elementary — is something closer to a field guide for being human.

The five students are Mila Wilson, Mackenzie McIntosh, Ella Porter, Matthew Blakemore, and August Siefert. Each came from a different classroom. Each arrived at the end of a year that has apparently taught them something worth passing down.

They spoke about their teachers first. Mila described a teacher who is always ready to help. Mackenzie appreciated the patience Miss Daniels showed when a classroom full of fourth graders took a little longer than expected to settle. Ella described Ms. Mason: "She helps us sound out words when we need help." Matthew praised Mrs. Craft for refusing to move on until every student understands — "no man left behind," as the interviewer put it. August summed up Mrs. Wolf with particular economy: she lets them do fun activities and makes them learn every day.

Every student, in their own way, described an adult who noticed them. And none of them seemed to take that for granted.

The conversation, of course, eventually arrived at Sir Isaac Newton, who once said that if he had seen farther than others, it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. The students were invited to think about who their giants are — and given an imaginary velvet-rope room where only the people who truly mattered could enter.

Parents. Teachers. Coaches. Friends. Principals. And, in August's case, his two bulldogs, because — as he explained with complete reasonableness — they give comfort.

Then came the harder question. Not who has been standing under you — but who will you let stand on your shoulders?

That reframing produced some of the most striking responses of the morning.

"Be nice, even if you're mad or sad," Mackenzie said. "And if you lose, it's okay, because you're probably gonna have more chances. And even if people are being mean to you, you still have to be kind to them — because it's the right thing to do."

August cut to it cleanly: "Make good choices. Be kind. Don't let your guy down. And if you make a mistake, don't make another one."

Ella: "When you fail a test, it's okay. Because you can try again. And when you're kind, you can help others and be honest."

Matthew went last. "Stuff is going to happen. Stuff is going to make you mad. But do not make others mad or hurt others just because something happens to you. Always keep your head up and your eyes open for anyone who needs help."

The conversation then turned to fifth grade and the nervousness that comes with it. Mackenzie has been on the same side of the building since kindergarten — the other side is genuinely unfamiliar territory. Matthew's specific fear: padlocks. "I thought it was five numbers," he said of the combination. It is three.

Failure — and how to live with it — occupied the last stretch of the conversation. The group was strikingly clear-eyed. "Failure is gonna happen no matter what you do," Matthew said. "You cannot dodge failure. But you can learn from failure." Then he added a detail that might not be expected from a fourth grader: "There are variables to things that will make you better at something."

Near the end, Mrs. Milam — the school's principal, who had been listening — was asked to weigh in on failure. She did not reach for reassurance or abstraction.

"There have been several things that I've failed at probably this year in my first year as principal," she said. "Some mornings you just fail. So it is okay."

It was a quiet gift — an adult in a position of authority telling students the truth about her own imperfection. And in a room full of children who had just spent an hour talking about kindness and learning from mistakes, it landed exactly right.

These five students will be fifth graders soon. They'll navigate new hallways, new combinations, new teachers, and new expectations. But if this morning is any indication, they've already absorbed the most important lesson elementary school has to offer.

The giants gave them their shoulders. Now they know it's their turn to offer theirs.