This month PEER created an advisory lesson promoting healthy activities to help de-stress. It was a timely lesson. 

I had an idea to supplement the lesson with an art component, some sort of decoration for the long stretch of while wall outside my classroom. A few weeks ago I brought to school a two-foot by six-foot piece of plywood that was taking up space in my garage. “Here’s your canvas,” I told the students. “What should be painted on it?”

 

I further qualified the instructions — the art had to relate to the healthy activities theme of our lesson, and it should be some sort of slogan, a brief quote, ideally positive in the tone. Other than that, they were given carte blanche!   

After a few minutes considering ideas, Anisha murmured a phrase just loud enough for the people sitting next to her to hear. She wasn’t confident that it was a good idea, but with some encouragement, she shared it with the whole group. “Just keep swimming,” she said.    

The students were enthusiastic. This was the one. I liked it just fine, but I didn’t understand why these three words connected with them so much. Then they explained that it was from Finding Nemo, which has been on my to-watch list since middle school.   

Painting the mural took two weeks. After Grace painted the lettering Kerti had sketched, the real activity became adding the aquatic life. For this I knew I could rely on the army of talented artists in my current and past classes. 

Roomana, a former AP Lang student, specialized in fish last year as part of her AP portfolio. She spent several study halls working in my classroom, first painting a giant, wide-mouthed trout, then adding bubbles all over the mural, the type of small touch that looks so classy and simple until you try to do it yourself.   

Day by day the mural started to come together, resembling a high-end resort’s aquarium: a lobster (painted by Liv), two jellyfish (Nana), multicolored sea snails (Cam), an octopus (Aaiswarya), a clown fish (Megan). 

Some students volunteered to add decorations, while some were pressed into service. Sami, for example, was not terribly interested in adding her touches to the mural, but with some encouragement she became as invested as anyone, deciding to paint plankton, a character who is allegedly a character from the TV show Spongebob Squarepants. Her intent was to make it an Easter egg for those looking at the mural closely. She spent an hour during two lunch blocks carefully applying the details of the little creature. 

To hang it on the wall, I used 200-pound-graded French cleats, the cinder block drilling completed by our head of maintenance, Chris Hill. 

Today we hung the mural and festooned it with links of healthy activities, student submissions to our advisory activity last Friday. As we reach the final stretch of the school year I’d like to paint over it and create a new mural, perhaps based around the themes of our quarter four advisory lesson. Hopefully the mural will continue to make use of not just my PEER students, but all of the talented artists at John Champe.