Students at Gary’s Wirt/Emerson School for Visual and Performing Arts decided to spend their Martin Luther King Jr. holiday giving back to their community and their school by braving the cold temperatures and working to clean up their school that has, in some areas, been underutilized or used as storage.
Assistant Principal Benjamin Ingram, was leading the students in their efforts and is working hard to have a positive impact and rally the community behind Wirt/Emerson.
“We’re trying to clean up the school and do what we can,” Ingram said. “We really want to come together as a school community. It’s really important to get the kids involved and we’re going to do the little things like clean areas out and use the space we make and the materials we can. The area we’re working on now was the concession stand at one time. After we get this cleaned up they’ll be able to use it and raise money selling concessions during performances and events.”
“We’re just going to start small,” said Ingram. “We’re taking things out, going through everything and organizing it to see what sort of resources we find and can use. We’ve been finding a lot of good things that we can use and we don’t know what’s still hidden. I’ve been going through different areas of the building that no one else has gone through since I’ve been here and I’ve been able to find classroom sets of books and other things the kids needed. We were short on literature books, for example, until we looked around and realized what we had stored.”
Since starting at Wirt/Emerson in the fall, Ingram has initiated a Parent Action Committee that brings parents into the conversation and efforts to clean things up and raise money for the school. The work has created an atmosphere of positivity and optimism that’s been missing from the area and is having an impact on the school, the students and the surrounding community.
“Gary doesn’t have all the resources so we’re going to do things ourselves,” Ingram said. “We want to show that Emerson’s a family and we’re not just going to depend on the school corporation. We understand the position they’re in.These kids are the best and brightest and we don’t want to see them get swallowed up so we’re going to do something before it’s too late. These kids deserve a chance and we’re trying to teach them what it means to give back to and to take responsibility. We call it ‘small wins’ and when you bind together before you know it you’ve got a ‘big win’ and that’s what we’re working towards.”
One of the students volunteering to help bring his school back to life is sophomore, Corrion Davis. Davis has been working hard to not only help clean up the school but, through student government, implement initiatives and programs that are aimed at helping his fellow students stay in school and have as big an impact as he is having on Wirt/Emerson.
“We all got our ‘fire’ back inside of us,” said Davis. “As a student government we’re all excited to see change and we’re working hard for change. In that effort we’ve been putting together several initiatives. We’ve been working with our administrators and our disciplinary administrators to come to a solution for the violence that’s happening in our schools.”
“One thing that we’re doing is a Mentorship Initiative,” said Davis. “Basically, the goal of the Initiative is to take troubled kids who see our school in a negative light, give them mentorship and show them the positive side and that there’s so much more out there for them. They are only exposed to one side of reality so I feel like to make a change and in order to be effective in their life you have to expose them to the positive things. If they see that road and if they can see and perceive it then they’ll be able to achieve it.”
Ingram, speaking about Davis and his Mentorship Initiative said, “Corrion came to us with the idea on his own. He did all this research and had references to examples where it had been used before. It was incredible. He’s a special kid and he’s definitely going places.”
Along with the efforts to clean and better utilize the school, Wirt/Emerson students, administrators and parents will be holding fundraising events in the near future to help further projects and initiatives. To find out what’s happening and ways to help, go to: http://www.garycsc.k12.in.us/schools/william-a-wirt-emerson-vpa/
