1. Cesar Chavez Day of Service School Beautification Project
Will Otfinoski
EDAD 624B
Culture of Teaching and Learning
Field Based Experience Spring 201
Cesar Chavez Day of Service School Beautification Project
Lemon Grove Academy
Elementary School

2. Background
Our school has a yearly tradition each spring when we have a special day called “Cesar Chavez Day of Service”. The entire school community is invited to the school on a Saturday to work together on projects to improve and beautify our school site. Each year students, parents, family and community members along with school staff plan and execute the work on this special day. My goal was to take a leadership role both in the planning and execution of the projects and ideas.

3. Planned Activity:
This year along with our garden and clean up projects we planned to paint a mural with a focus on the theme of “Leaders”. This became a big challenge for me to coordinate, along with the other projects. I began by asking teachers and staff members to discuss the topic of “Leaders” with their students as part of our character education program. These were the ideas to discuss:
What is a leader?
What does it mean to be a leader?
Who are some leaders you know and why do you admire them?
These questions and discussion helped inform students to prepare them to share ideas of people they feel should be on the mural

4. Report of Implementation
This mural has been at our school site for many years, before our school’s name change. Many students and staff over the years have asked about repainting this as it was not done with much input from students. However, when we began priming over this mural many students came over and expressed dismay and concern in spite of the fact that so many in our school community wanted it redone.

5. Emails sent about the event

6. Getting ideas from students
Based on the immediate negative reaction from some students about covering the old mural, we knew involvement from students was critical for them to feel and be a part of this change. I put up posters and left out sticky notes and markers. During the morning assembly I reminded students about writing names of people who they believe are leaders to them. We gathered the names and compiled a list of people for our mural.

7. Mural Project Meeting Notes
Malba can paint faces- we will use up to 5 faces
Who will faces be? Survey students/ staff use poster/post-it notes
staff about this and mention at staff meeting
Quote for mural: Never Underestimate the power of your example
Primer wall Thurs March 27 after school- Will/Taryn
Purchase materials Friday March 28
Gallon sky blue, quart primary colors and black and white
Brushes of different mall sizes, tape, plastic
Use sky blue background- paint Friday after purchased 4pm
Put up posters Weds, Thurs, Fri for students to share ideas
Include student council in painting of names of other leaders in addition to main 5 faces on mural
Upon completion plan some type of ceremony for school

8. Planting succulents along primary garden beds Linda MA
The following is a list of projects outlined for the Cesar Chavez Day of Service. In red is a staff member(s) who will be managing that project
Planting succulents along primary garden beds Linda MA
Planting drought tolerant flowering shrubs, flowers, succulents along 2nd & 3rd grade hallway planters Dr Arranda
Planting various edible herbs, drought tolerant plants, and succulents in middle school science planter beds Theo
Between Kinder and 1st grade classrooms: Rick & Francis
Building and erecting arbor for grapes
Fixing and laying down more landscape fabric along path
Weeding flower bed by sidewalk
Planting grapes next to arbor
Staining/sealing fences and picnic tables in primary areas Emma
Repainting wall-ball walls on playground Wendy W
Repainting paw prints along sidewalk from front to cafeteria Brittany
Leadership mural project: Will & Francelia
Set meeting for mural team: Feb 27 2:45pm
Invite mural artist design team- Malba and Francelia
School wide ideas for leaders to be depicted in mural
Theme ideas for mural title/quotes
Layout and time lines for work
Materials needed

9. Layout of Theme and Plan for Mural

10. Process of painting wall

11. Nearly Complete Mural

12. Parent and Staff Volunteers

13. Student Volunteers

14. Reflection
In reflecting on this process it is clear to me how much time and effort must go into planning and organizing for events like this. One particular challenge was the process of determining the names and design on the mural. There were a lot of differing opinions about which names, faces and design should be on the mural.
Based on this challenge I made sure that I connected the decision process with the students. I decided to use posters and sticky notes to give students a chance to share ideas for the mural. I made an announcement for students and teachers to discuss famous leaders whom they look up to and would like to see on the wall.
I learned that the more involved you get people in decisions the more connection there will be with them. However, there may be many differing opinions and these need to be managed and in the end decisions made. I was surprised at how strong some of the people and students felt about the mural, especially since it was replacing an older existing one. So I needed to assess all the responses and decided on the names. I also decided to add many names beneath the faces to allow for more names to appear on the mural.
Ensuring names suggested by students appear on the mural was clearly important. In the end the varied ideas for the mural all came together,

15. Reflection
With respect to the entire event the community came out and really did some fine work together to improve our school. This took a lot of preparation and communication to be sure everyone knew of the details of the event.
Especially when so many people are volunteering, they need clear direction and people need to be in place to run certain projects. I made it a point to plan for staff to be at each job or task needing to be done. This year with so many volunteers committed to come, I knew we needed to be ready and have staff in place to help run each project. This was the case and the event went much more smoothly than in past years, and volunteers were consistently busy and productively contributing.
I also will look back at the notes taken this year when planning for next year’s event. Hopefully with that practice in mind this event will get better and better.