Today, a menagerie of some 200 wildlife, sports scenes, cartoons, landscapes and seascapes decorate the topside of rooms scattered throughout the school. Unlike Michelangelo, however, students don't have to lie on their backs to work. It was a learning process for all of us. I got right in there with them and we figured it out together. Ceiling tiles have brittle, porous surfaces and we developed a process for conditioning the panels with a thin coat of latex paint so they would be easier to work with.
Teachers love it, too.
Requests for the paintings pour in to Ms. Rooks long before the students are ready to go to work. When business teacher Claudia Harmon changed rooms, her tiles went with her. Former students, who have graduated and left the tiny town of about 800 residents, have been known to bring their spouses back to show off their tiles. Ms. Rooks says sometimes alumni come back and want to take their works with them. One student is donating a tile to be used in a patient room at Trinity Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler next week, and hopes to donate more in the future.