For students at the Burke School, the feeling of hope often seems out of reach.
Lauren Edelstein, an art teacher at the school, wanted to use a recent arts grant the school received to invoke some positive thinking among the students. The Burke School is an alternative learning center for students with emotional disabilities, such as bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD.
"We have a different population of students," she said. "Often, they don’t really have a lot of hope for the future."
Edelstein organized a school-wide mural project for which she had high hopes. She gave a "cross-curricular, multi-cultural presentation on symbols" to each class in the school, in order to prepare students for their assignment. She gave examples of various symbols with similar meanings, such as a peace sign on paper versus the two-finger sign people form with their hands, both of which mean the same thing.
The students were then asked to draw a symbol that represented hope, based on their personal interpretations. Some common drawings were of basketballs, peace signs, happy faces, trees and Earth.
"They were really excited and really invested," said Edelstein. "I was surprised at which students got really involved."
Once every student in the school completed a drawing, Edelstein made a collage and used graphic software to put it all together. She’s been at the school until 9 p.m. on some nights, for several weeks, working on getting the collage painted onto the wall as a mural, entitled "Hopes for the Future."
"Everybody painted different parts, and I think it came out how everyone wanted," said John Brooks, 14, of Reston. "I just hope it will always be a good sign of hope and set an example for others to have hope."
The end result is a non-traditional school mural, said Edelstein, because it doesn’t depict the typical scene of a group of people holding hands. "I wanted it to be very personal," she said.
"It’s just a really nice team effort, and it really looks nice," said Sandy Mathews, the school’s librarian. "The kids are really proud of what they did."
The colorful mural now decorates a cafeteria wall at the school. The otherwise bare wall in the room "really needed something," said Mathews. Since the students use the room as a student lounge on Fridays, and as a cafeteria daily, it’s in a place where they can see it everyday, said Edelstein.
"It’s to remind them that there is hope, and there is a future," she said.
Once they’ve moved on and grown up, the mural will be there for other students — something John is pretty proud of.
"It felt like I was helping the school community, because I was making artwork everyone can see," said John. "It made me feel like I will always have something here to be remembered for."
Edelstein said she wanted the students to not only have hope for their futures, but also be a part of something that contributes to the community, she said. She hopes to complete several murals in upcoming years, eventually enough to decorate all of the walls in the cafeteria.
"It felt good that I had made something, not just for me, but for the whole school," said John. "It made me feel I was doing something to help inspire other kids."