Brightly-colored
pieces of cloth, painted with the dreams of students at
Ferry Pass Middle School, whipped in the wind Thursday
during the Dream Flag celebration.
Students
participated in the project -- which was the school's
kickoff for National Poetry Month -- by writing a poem that
expressed their dreams, painting a small piece of cloth with
the poem and other images and hanging the colored flags in
front of the school.
Jamey Jones, a
seventh-grade language arts teacher at the school, said he
first heard about the Dream Flag Project while attending a
teachers conference last fall.
"It's a national
project that started in Philadelphia," he said. "Now over
11,000 students from Nigeria, China and the United States
are doing this."
The project was
inspired by a poem by Langston Hughes titled "The Dream
Keeper," Jones said.
"By hanging the
flags in the wind, I think it symbolically sends the dreams
with the wind," he said.
The celebration,
which featured the school's symphonic band and the seventh-
and eighth-grade chorus, was the first time all 900 students
at the school took part in a unified project, said Ann
Bookout, principal of Ferry Pass.
"All of our
students with all of their abilities have participated," she
said. "We have not isolated anyone from this wonderful
opportunity to express their dreams."
It took about 60
yards of fabric to make one nine-by-nine-inch square flag
for each student, Bookout said.
One of those
dreams belonged to Rylan Bricker, 14. The seventh-grader
said his poem was a dream of world peace.
"The world is all
the wars and fighting," he said. "If God helped stop the
wars, it would be good for everyone."
BREAKOUT
'A City'
Dreams are our
roads and foundation.
Hope shields our
dreams and puts walls around them.
Happiness fuels
them to make new ideas to turn on the light.
Joy runs through
them like a stream of water.
And everyone has
one, making them a city.
— Jacquel
Bradley, 12
Copyright (c)
Pensacola News Journal. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the
permission of Gannett Co., Inc. by NewsBank, inc.
Record Number: pen25316699