Project Gratitude

This week Smithtown High School East participated in Project Gratitude, a social emotional learning printmaking project.  Over 350 students and teachers participated in the project creating small gratitude prints to remind themselves to be thankful and to give away to family, friends, loved ones, and even troops overseas as part of a collaborative project with the diversity club.

The project was created by Mr. Needles and grew out of our schools social emotional learning program.  It was arranged with the help of a collaborative group of teachers from our high school cohort of the Smithtown's Social Emotional Learning program including: Mrs. Schmalz (Counseling), Mr. Kelly (English), Mrs.Tener (Social Studies), Ms. Locascio (Special Ed), Mrs. Brienza (Special Ed), Mrs.Scholepflin (Math), Ms.Primiceri (Spanish), along with Mr. Needles (Art).

Students from a variety of clubs such as the National Art Honor Society, The Math Honor Society, Leadership, the Diversity Club, the Media Art Honor Society and others joined with interested students and teachers from across the school for the project.  Classes also joined in with Mr. Needles art and media classes during the day to create prints during Thanksgiving week.

The after school event included a short video, a guided meditation led by Mrs. Schmalz, a reflection lessons learned about gratitude from Mrs.Tavis and Leadership based on their reading of alumni and author John Gordon's The Energy Bus, a few personal stories and reflections in words by Mrs.Scholepflin and in writing Mr. Kelly by and a concluded with the printmaking project.

The printmaking portion of the project featured students creating 3"x5" prints on paper stock using Gelli printing plates and acrylic paint along with stamps, stencils, and other creative materials.