By Kairi Asselstine
Photo by Mary Evans
Willow’s Heart and Soul Week, which ran from January 18-20, featured a range of events in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., including an open mic during lunch, drawing with chalk in the quad, and advisories doing acts of kindness to contribute positively to our community. Advisors led their students in activities such as cleaning up the school grounds, decorating the school, and writing notes for teachers as an act of kindness for the community.
During lunch on Thursday, January 19th, students participated in decorating the quad with chalk drawings. At the open mic on Friday, January 20th, students performed songs on the front steps for everyone who came to watch.
Participants in this open mic took the opportunity to let loose and have fun with other students during lunch. “It was more low-key than the other open mics held this year and it had a nice crowd,” sophomore Noah Kehlenbach said. “There were more people, too.”
On Friday, January 20th, different advisories within the school went around doing acts of kindness and service for the Willow community and the surrounding neighborhood. These activities included donating clothing to homeless shelters, writing letters to Willow School teachers, and cleaning up inside or outside of the school. Coach Fogarty and her advisory chose to donate clothing to the homeless people of New Orleans as an act of kindness, and the students enjoyed helping those who were in need.
“Our advisory collected items such as socks, toothbrushes and toothpaste, menstrual products, etc., to donate to the City of New Orleans Shelter and Engagement Center,” said Alexander Eskew, a Willow junior and student in Coach Fogarty’s advisory. “We chose to donate to this instead of something like Goodwill or the Salvation Army because we wanted our donations to go directly to those who needed them most.”
Continuing on the trend of helping people outside of our school, Mr. Bratcher’s advisory went and cleaned up the neighborhood surrounding the school buildings, picking up any trash they could find during the short period of time they had. “It was nice to know that we were making the neighborhood better,” said Elise Chambers, a Willow sophomore in Mr. Bratcher’s advisory.
Alternatively, within the school, Ms. Sullivan’s advisory helped the librarians clean their tables and bookshelves while plenty of other advisories wrote letters, both anonymously and not, for their teachers along with words of affirmation to deliver around the school.
“I got two cute notes from students,” said Ms. Crockett, English and Publications teacher, “and I put them up by my desk where I can see them for the rest of the year.”
