Showcase for Peace
Last night, students at Joliet Central – the high school where I work – held the first annual Showcase for Peace: Joliet students creatively expressing their stance on gun violence. We had students submit poetry, essays, stories, songs, artwork, and photographs about their experience with and thoughts on gun violence, and they presented it on stage in our student center.
As you might imagine, the night was amazing. And I’m not surprised… exactly. As with any large event open to the community, I was nervous. I knew the kids would show up and be amazing, like they always are – especially with things they are passionate about – but I didn’t know how much of an audience we’d have. Our community can be difficult to reach for a lot of reasons. If these kids were going to share their work about this important issue, I wanted to be sure that a ton of people showed up to hear and see it.
And then, as we were setting up, one of the girls who had clearly spent an enormous amount of time on her work for the event was there. She had hand-written her poems, copied them larger, and mounted them on cork board with tacks in school colors. She had then glued 17 pieces of shiny material on one, and 17 battery-operated tea light candles on the other as tributes to those lost in Parkland. When she had submitted her work, she told us she just wanted it displayed, that she was too nervous to read it aloud.
But before the event, as we were all running around trying to get the jumbo screen on, and the mic to work, and the artwork hung, I saw her standing in front of her work with a man’s arm around her – maybe her father or brother? I walked over and overheard her talking about picking one to read, so I asked if she would like to be added to the program, and she said she would. The look on the man’s face was one of absolute pride, and she was so excited.
Not surprisingly, she read beautifully. Perhaps also not surprisingly, we had an excellent turnout to hear it. But in that quiet moment before everything started, I realized it didn’t even matter who was there in the audience. I’m not sure if her life had been affected by gun violence (though I could see from the effort she put into her work and the look on her and the man’s face, she probably had), but even that didn’t matter in that moment. This girl had written what was in her heart, her family was intensely proud of her, and – even more important – she was proud of herself. I could have gone home right then and called it all a success. I am, of course, glad I didn’t, because there were moments like that all night, and I was so fortunate to be witness to them.
This generation will save us, and we do not deserve them.
Featured Image: Teachers on the planning committee for the event, holding student-created protest signs used at the March 14 walkout.