The two groups met last year. Eighth-graders at Brandeis’ San Francisco campus were looking for a senior-year service project. Bret Harte third-graders needed paint and patience to help them create three murals. A partnership was born.
Once a month, Brandeis students traveled to Bret Harte. They led talks with three third-grade classes to formulate ideas.
On their own campus, the Brandeis students sketched backgrounds for the murals and invited Bret Harte students to their school on Brotherhood Way to approve the drawings. The third-graders drew in the details over the backgrounds. The drawings were then projected onto the walls and painted.
The results are “People Who are Important to Us,” “Our Home Countries” and “The Hero Bus.”
The 20-foot-long “Our Home Countries” includes a river, fire, peace sign and national flags of Honduras, El Salvador, Israel, the United States, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Mexico.
Images of Abraham Lincoln and 3Com Park grace “People Who are Important to Us.”
Just as tangible as the brightly colored walls are the friendships that formed between the students.
When Cody Fine, a Brandeis graduate in ninth grade at University High School in San Francisco, walked into Bret Harte on Friday, he was immediately bombarded by a swarm of fourth-grade bodies.
“You dyed your hair,” they screamed, pointing at the shocking white crop of hair.
Fine laughed and wrestled with the students before going to see the mural he worked on, “Our Home Countries.”
Fine, who was “pretty excited” about the murals, said he probably made so many new friends at Bret Harte because “I worked with the bilingual class and I speak Spanish. So I spoke with them in Spanish a lot. And we bonded.”
Similarly, Polina Melamed — another Brandeis graduate attending University High — received a silver ring with an orange stone from one of the Bret Harte girls. “We really bonded,” she said, “And I wear the ring all the time.”
Melamed said she enjoyed leaving the all-Jewish environment of Brandeis to meet “African-American and Hispanic kids who yelled out our names. They were so excited. Their eyes just lit up.”
The Bret Harte kids said they liked “painting,” “learning about each other’s cultures” and “that nobody called each other names just because they were different.”
Rebecca Field, Brandeis service learning coordinator, marveled as the curtain covering “People Who Are Important to Us” was drawn back.
“The art speaks for itself,” she said.
Bret Harte principal Cheryl Curtis added: “This exemplifies what education is all about — the science of caring.
“These murals show a deep understanding among the children. They crossed cultural, religious and language bridges and became friends.”
Following a few short speeches by students and principals from both schools, the kids were free to admire their work, nosh on Noah’s bagels and shmears and fill out “postcards” to be placed in a memory book.
Blank oversized postcards were taped to the wall. Students filled out their addresses and wrote their best memories of the yearlong mural project. These musings, along with photos taken at each meeting, will be mailed to all the young artists.
Bret Harte teacher Mark Bolton wrote the first one: “I loved how excited my kids got every time Brandeis visited.”
And as the Brandeis graduates and Bret Harte students wrestled, giggled and laughed through the hallways, it was clear they still were.