 Everybody can be great because everybody can serve. Coming into the school, we didn't have any murals, we didn't have anything to promote a college-going culture. We didn't have anything that would remind me of a traditional or typical elementary school when I first walked in. Everything was very bland. Schools are anchors in communities. Schools are a safe place for families and kids to go to. So partnering with schools, Kaiser Permanente and schools together is really the formula that's necessary to create healthy communities. When you come into an elementary school, kids should want to be here. Sometimes visual is the way to pull people in and then you get the hard work done. It's like family. It's family here. Even before my son got here, it just always felt like a family. We kind of take responsibility for each other and all of our kids at the school. Everybody has a different place. Miss Turner's a mom. Miss Hernandez is like the dad. And all of our kids, you know, they're our kids. There's like a thousand plus kids. Every child needs something different. We're making changes instructionally, socially. We're more ingrained into the community, getting my parents more actively involved. So we're transitioning from working as a standalone entity into more of a community environment. I'm really big on giving people the opportunity to change. In Barrett, we are trying to form and move forward as a unit, as a community. So this year we're working really hard along with all of our staff. Everybody from the bottom all the way to the top, working together to come to and work towards a common vision, which is to move our school forward and to increase our student achievement. And one of the ways that we're doing it like today is beautifying our school, making our school a better and positive place for kids to come. Because when kids come to school to a place that's safe and clean and conducive to learning, they will learn. If we want to make communities healthier places for everyone, schools are central to that. I came to help my school. It's been lately very messy, but I think if we actually work together, I think we can make a beautiful school. Do you like painting? Yeah. I painted mushrooms. I paint two fishes because it was, it's the March of the Little King Junior. MLK has always been a day on, not a day off. It's really great to work for Kespermonte that allows us to go out into the community and volunteer and give back to the communities that we serve. So what we did is we cleaned it all up, stripped it down. LAUSD helped us out with that as well. Dug out all of the garbage, put in brand new soil. We added all the nutrition and we planted along the line of the fence. There's a lot of things that have to take place to make this project happen. We are doing at a library. We are basically creating one from an unused classroom. Today we are building a brand new upper elementary school library by installing five separate murals, four within the space and one on the outside. We're turning this entire wall into a large oversized bookcase. So we're going to have each individual color is going to become its own book with a real title that the librarian downstairs already picked out for us. My name is Darryl Fukushima, a librarian aide here at Charles Barrett Elementary. When I first came here, this library had so much work to be done and I told them, no, it's like this library is not finished. Every library I've left, I've always left it better than when I first came here. But here, there's so much work to be done. They're so happy when they see me, they wave at me. I mean, they tell the teacher, it's like, it's a library day. When's our turn for the library? When's our turn for a library and that stuff? They get really excited to come over here and to be able to check out books and read books and stuff like that. And it does make an effect on that actually. All right, who knows what we're doing here today? Planting plants. We are planting plants, not just any plants. We're planting California native plants, special to live in California and thrive in the soreness of California. So just a California native plant. First things first, what are we going to do guys? We're going to dig a what? Oh. Yeah, he's like a crane with his hands. We're going to crane it out. Go ahead, make a hole. All right, check that out. What do you think? Is it fun? Kind of. Be good, jump Johnny upside down. Perfect. Oh, we're loosening the roots so it can keep growing. When we're able to kind of meet our partners in the middle and understand kind of something they can do and what can we do that might be unique or but still within our artistic temperament, it felt like this was something that we could add to and that we could work with and that we understood what was going on in schools. Hey, so what we're doing is for the Barrett beautification we're working on making some desks really beautiful for their up-road grade library. And then now we're doing the final coat of lacquer, hopefully somewhat resistant to children gouging it up again. We'd be amazed at how many of our students do not have books. There is an incredible amount of joy when a student gets a book. Wow, the colors that they're putting make you feel very relaxed. But I think they're going to be very excited when they look at the library up there. We see that in terms of long-term health that people who are, can read, who have high, good, high literacy skills live longer, they're healthier all around. The community helps educate everybody. We learn through our parents, we learn through our teachers, we learn through our peers. It takes partnerships that are willing to come into our communities and it's easier said than done. Staff of Barrett's been really great partners and LAUSD really was a really good partner as well. So we went from a classroom that was on use. We didn't start with a blank slate. We started with a room that needed to have both cases removed, the dry erase boards removed. All of a sudden we found holes behind those dry erase boards so now you're talking about getting walls patched and getting them ready, getting the surface ready for a mural so that the muralist would have a blank canvas that she turned into a magnificent piece of art. But just to get to that process was a collaboration of many individuals. Our superintendent had a vision to create pathways, new pathways for our students. My role with Kaiser Permanente Watts Counseling and Learning Center I work a lot with students. A lot of the things that we focus on in my role is to ask students what they want to do when they grow up. Kaiser Permanente thinks that's really important because when a student, especially in this area, sees themselves in the future, they're more likely to protect it. And what do you want to be when you grow up? Paleontologists and YouTubers. Why paleontologists? Get rich. That's good enough for me. Alright, well thank you so much. We're in this together. We stand together. They put resources in. We put resources in. And it's really that working together that creates the magic for what we have as a shared vision. Supporting our children and being the very best that they can be. Helping them dream. Helping their dreams come true. This is a STEAM Academy. And the A in STEAM stands for Arts. So we really wanted an opportunity to help solidify that idea of how important arts are and how the arts, when you bring the arts into any situation, you can transform. You can transform a room. You can transform a life. That that engagement is really critical, I think, to the health of any strong community. Just to kind of get our kids to dream. You know, we tell kids you can be anything you want to be, but I don't know what I'm dreaming for and I don't have any examples of what that is. Everyone in this room is going to make a difference in our society because of what you're doing. My name is Dr. Wanda Austin, and I am a STEAM hero. As a child that grew up in the inner city, I didn't have role models. I didn't see examples of African American heroes. And so I'm truly honored to be on the wall of heroes, of STEAM heroes, because I hope that it encourages young people that they can be whatever they want to be with the education that they're getting here at Barrett in science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. It will ensure that they can achieve their goals and be great STEAM heroes themselves. What's important is that a lot of times in our programs, we might only be able to be here for a day or a week. In some cases maybe a little bit longer, but with a project like this, we get to live at the school. The message continues forward for many years, and it's something that hopefully will exist a lifetime. Recognize wonderful. If you want to be great, wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness. By giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great. Because everybody can serve.