The world seems to be a very dark place these days.
News headlines shout about battle and bloodshed. Countries and families are torn apart by terrorists and warlords. Children are left orphaned and homeless by warfare. It all makes peace seem like an impossible dream.
But, as students at Long Branch Elementary in Liverpool learned last week, it’s a dream worth working toward.
The school celebrated the International Day of Peace on Tuesday, Sept. 23 (the actual date was Sunday, Sept. 21) by participating in Pinwheels for Peace, a program developed by two art teachers in Florida. Students designed their own pinwheels using a premade template, then planted them in the school’s front yard in the shape of a peace sign.
The school joins numerous other groups to take part in the endeavor since its launch in 2005. Ann Ayers and Ellen McMillan, of Coconut Creek, Fla., envisioned the project as a way for students to express their feelings about what was going on in the world and in their lives. In the first year, groups in more than 1,325 locations worldwide participated. Last year, more than 4 million pinwheels were spinning around the world, including the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia, Canada, the Middle East, Africa and South America.
The program came to LBE through art teacher Jennifer Matott, who started working with students on Pinwheels for Peace six years ago as a way to promote tolerance in the school.
“When I came here, I wanted a way for my students to have a way to have a visual representation of what’s going on in their community and their world… and how they interact with different people,” Matott said. “A lot of times, kids don’t learn how to treat other people at home or when they’re in other groups, but when they’re here, they have to interact with each other so much that they need to learn that celebrating differences is okay.”
For more information about Pinwheels for Peace, visit pinwheelsforpeace.com.
