A very patriotic fabric

By painting a mural depicting a soaring eagle next to New York’s Twin

Towers, students at Burbank’s Community Day school had a chance to

show not only pride in their country but pride in their own

accomplishments and creative work.

The mix of high school and junior high students spentlast week

painting the images underneath the words “never forget” onto a large

white king-size sheet that will be a portable mural for the school as

part of Patriot Day, declared by President Bush to honor the victims

of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks. Most schools observed

Patriot Day on Friday.

“It was neat for the kids. They got to participate in something,

rather than just a moment of silence,” said Community Day School

Principal Christine Krohn. “When they all saw it at the end, they

just stood in awe of the whole thing.”

School staff worked with students to help generate ideas for what

the painting would look like.

“We had talked to the kids about different ideas about what they

wanted to do,” said Krohn. “They had gone through a bunch of books

and decided they wanted an eagle and they wanted the towers.”

Students generated a concept drawing on regular paper then

enlarged it with the use of a projector and traced it onto the giant

sheet. Over a period of several days, students went class by class

and painted a section so that everyone had a chance to contribute to

the painting of the mural.

“It’s primarily their attempt to say something in a picture that

would also serve as a constant reminder to them,” said Crone. “The

kids kept commenting on the phrase ‘never forget’ and brought up

discussions as they were working on it.”

Four students at the school, Cynthia Barcena, Cynthia Robles, Alma

Alfaro and Johanna Platero, donated several extra hours of their time

to the project by etching the images onto the sheet and highlighting

and shading the images after the other students were done.

“To me it had a lot of meaning behind it,” said 11th-grader

Cynthia Barcena. “It’s basically remembering all the events of Sept.

11th and everything that’s going on.”

Cynthia felt the urge to be more involved in the project knowing

students would use it to honor future Patriot Days.

“I wanted to take a big part in it knowing they’re going to put it

up every year now,” she said.

Alma, a 10th-grader, said she felt a sense of pride from

contributing extra time to the project.

“I just wanted to have a big part of it, so I could say “Yeah,

this is what I did’,” Alma said. “I look at it as something nice that

I’ve done.”

The Community Day School offers an alternative education program

for Burbank Unified School District students who have credit or

attendance deficits at other schools. Krohn believed that

participating in the project gave the students a chance to feel a

sense of pride and ownership over something they accomplished.

“The students took a lot of pride in what they were doing,” said

Krohn, who plans on having the mural framed for display throughout

the year. “This gave them a sense of ownership, to say, ‘I did this

and it’s mine.’ It was a neat sensation to see that kind of pride,

that’s what we want to see from the kids.”