WESTERVILLE, Ohio – The power of words and kindness can impact people in so many different ways. Two middle school students in Westerville City Schools are learning that first hand.
What started as an idea with just a few words at the beginning of the school year turned into an ongoing art project that could be finished in January.
Inspired by another bathroom at the school, Sam Lisi-Huber, 13, got permission from the principal to paint on the walls while including positive messages. Understanding what it’s like to start middle school for the first time, the goal was to help peers settle into that stage of life.
“I hope this art kind of makes the sixth-grade girls like more calm and kind of make something like, ‘oh I can do this. I can get through this,’” said Lisi-Huber.
Starting with these words on the wall, “Your future is created by what you do today, not tomorrow,” Lisi-Huber said, “when they walk in the bathroom, that’s really kind of the first thing that you see, and I feel like that really inspires them. I kind of wanted to add bright colors. I wanted to add, like flowers and stuff and those flowers turn into the mushrooms.”
Lisi-Huber hasn’t been working alone. Lennon Daniels has been lending a hand in the project, too.
Working on a wall that said, “You are awesome,” Daniels said “it’s honestly something that I’d like to hear as like a compliment from people, but never really gotten.”
Even so, for Daniels, it’s all about paying the compliment forward as taking part in the project has already broadened their artistic skills and given back in a way not previously imagined.
“It’s done a lot for me. I’ve reconnected with some of my old friends,” Daniels said.
Art teacher Juls Rathje has been giving pointers to both students as they go along. She said while painting a mural in the bathroom wouldn’t have been the first choice, it’s been exciting to watch them grow as artists and impact their classmates.
“When they come to class, then other students want to hear about it and show pictures and share their sketches with them and then everybody wants to paint a bathroom,” she said.
While an impact has already been made, Rathje hopes students will see that others really do care about them.
Grateful to work on the project, Lisi-Huber said the project’s become an outlet of artistic expression and “it actually inspires me and makes me feel a lot better, and I feel like if that happens to me, it’s definitely going to happen to a lot of other students that walk in here.”
For now, Lisi-Huber hopes this won’t be the last bathroom they work on because “it really feels amazing to be able to do this.”
