The Wall
Lourdes Sanchez is the student leader of a Public Achievement group at Humboldt High School in St. Paul, Minn. As her PA coach, I encouraged her to write this reflection about our team's work over the past school year.
We began in September 2008. We were told by our teacher, Colonel Johnson, that we would do Public Achievement this year. We decided that for a topic we wanted to see changes in our school. Therefore, we wrote a list of ideas of things that needed improvement. Once we agreed on beautifying Humboldt, we needed to get our ideas down into one project. We decided on a mural on our pillar and to put benches outside to make the school more comfortable and friendly looking. At semester change, we were surprised that we lost four students from our group and new ones were put in. We also hit another road block when we found out that the University of Minnesota already had plans for the school grounds.
For a few weeks, we were down, because we did not think we could go through with our plans. After attending a few site council meetings and talking with our principal, we realized that the school was on our side. We pushed forward with the project!
