Grayson County High School Teacher Beverly Dowell said art students created pet shop and bug circus murals finished last week at Leitchfield Pediatric Clinic.
She said when the project was first introduced the students were told to get together designs and ideas.
“They used that as an image bank and put together their own ideas,” said Dowell.
She added that Drew McMonigal designed the pet shop mural, and Tyler Shepard created the bug circus.
“We put the collections of designs together and let Doctor (Joseph) Lee look at them,” explained Dowell.
Dr. Lee felt the two designs he chose were best suited for the clinic.
The drawing and painting class, which consisted of 30 kids working on the project, started working in class for one week before painting the murals at LPC.
Director of Community Education, Angie Jones, explained how the Learn and Serve grants work for educators.
Jones said the Department of Education receives a large sum of money from the National Learn and Serve Foundation each year.
“They offer each of the community educators in the state an opportunity to apply for these funds,” added Jones. “Not all of us get them, but I have applied every year for past eight years, and have always received at least $4,000.”
With the grant money, educators like Jones have the opportunity to offer mini grants to teachers, or to do the projects herself.
Jones said service learning, in a nutshell, is taking one population like high school students, and take what they have learned in the classroom and re-present it to someone else.
“The kids are learning about art,” explained Jones. “The idea is once they present the work, then we will celebrate their accomplishments.”
She gave examples like pizza parties, or whatever the teacher who is responsible for the project decides the reward will be.
Jones said the good thing now is that the students gain a class credit for participating in community projects.
“My son is in Mrs. Dowell’s class and he is getting the art award this year,” explained Jones. “He is not artistic at all, but he worked hard on the project.”
Every student, whether they were an artist or not for Mrs. Dowell’s class, participated in some way with the LPC project.
Dowell had a number of students who volunteered on their own time to come back and help out with painting the murals.
Jones said some of the students even put 10 extra hours in after school hours.
With the grant money Jones was able to pay for all of the needed supplies and transportation to the hospital.
Jones added that the main focus of the project was to give students a sense of leadership, sense of self-confidence, and responsibility.
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