Chalking it up to new dreams

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Sadie Rawlings

Chalked up. Hundreds of students write the goals that they hope to accomplish before they graduate. Each student wrote a different response that eventually covered the entire wall. “We had hoped that the chalk wall would allow people to think outside the box and create some goals for themselves for them to accomplish before they graduate,” Anvitha Bommenini, a sophomore yearbook student, explained.

Sadie Rawlings, Co-associate Editor

Students use twenty-six letters combined in beautiful words in chalk of every color. Hundreds of dreams, goals, aspirations, visions, and hopes stretch across the grey wall outside the lunchroom in the Plaza. Students line up to find a place on the wall to write down their dreams before they graduate; there’s an excitement in the air while the sun shines, bubbles exploding from the bubble machine float gently in the breeze, and pop music streams from the nearby karaoke machine.

Yearbook recently set up opportunities for students to write down their goals before graduating; both seniors graduating in a month or a freshman completing their first year of high school wrote on the wall.

The goal for the yearbook students was to set up the chalk wall as a marketing campaign to finish selling their books.

Screenshot taken from sofoyearbook, the Instagram of the yearbook at South.

We were hoping that the wall would be a good way to market the selling of the book. It’s so incredible that we’ve had so much school participation already.

— Emily Danielsson, the editor-and-chief of the yearbook staff

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Not only did the yearbook promote their book, but they were able to encourage students to come together as they discuss their own hopes and dreams, and then share those dreams on social media. After students write their goals, they are able to take a picture and share it on their Instagram story to enter into a raffle for a free yearbook.

Laura Kelly, a sophomore, took a picture of her goal and shared it on her Instagram story, “I was excited to share my goal because no one really asks, and it’s a good reminder for myself that it’s something I want to remember high school with.”

Students listed every type of dream on that wall; a reminder that everyone has unique goals and dreams; someone’s dream was “travel to Europe” or “become homecoming queen” or simply “pass”. This chalk wall has brought together the students at South Forsyth to recognize what they can accomplish in the years they call high school.