By Chris Lewis | Mar. 11, 2021
When students at Mount Pearl Senior High found themselves in the middle of a Covid-19 storm last month, a class of younger students at Saint Matthew’s School in nearby Cowan Heights found a way to let them know they were thinking about them.
Each of the students in Stephen Spratt’s Grade 6 class took time out of their days to draw a husky, the MPSH mascot, and hold their work up to a webcam to share. Spratt took a quick screenshot of each student’s art, and tweeted it out to the students and staff in Mount Pearl.
“You hear about some of the sad things being said to those students, and I thought this would be a fun, quick, easy activity I could have the students do,” Spratt said. “Even if just one person saw it on Twitter, that’s what we wanted.”
The message they wanted to send was simple, he said.
“We’re all here in this together, and we’re here for you,” Spratt said, adding that his students hoped it, at the very least, brightened the day of some of the older students and the staff. “Hopefully this small gesture will bring a bit of light to all this negativity.”
Spratt said things like this can be especially beneficial to young students in a time like this, when they are isolated in their homes and unable to see anybody aside from the online classmates on Zoom.
This positive outlook is something he tries to embed in all his students, Spratt said, with things like “fuzzy Fridays” where he shows his class things such as a video of some talented youth around the world that he believes will inspire them to be the best versions of themselves.
He said the students were more than happy to collaborate on this positivity project, even going on to add their own little flourishes to their drawings after the fact to make them more personal.
“I think a reason why they all jumped on board with it so quickly is because they know that one little thing can lead to much bigger things,” Spratt said. “Them drawing those pictures, that’s what they were trying to show. One show of kindness and positivity can have a big impact.”
