HOLLY POND, Ala. – Holly Pond High School seniors have something special planned before the beginning of the school year. Aug. 1-2, they will personalize their parking spaces by painting them.
Principal Janet Turner talked about how the idea came about, and said she is excited to see the seniors do something special before the school year gets started.
“I got the idea off of Pinterest and I thought it would be something really fun for our students to do. I sent out the information over email and Facebook. I got a lot of positive responses,” Turner said. “We’ll be painting on the 1st and the 2nd. All of the seniors will come here together. It’ll be a group project, something good for the school and something good for the seniors to do as a group. We are all going to help each other.”
Seniors Samantha Giles and Aliyah Ryan said they are excited to show off their artwork.
“We went to Mrs. Turner’s office the next day and (were) like, ‘Thank you so much. We’ve been wanting to do this forever.’ We’ve seen it all over TikTok,” Giles said. “It’ll be something we’ll take with us as we get older, and it will be something special. I hope that everyone in the future (is) able to do something like this.”
Added Ryan, “It’ll be really fun getting to do it as a class and we will get to do this with all of our friends. We’ll definitely have a lot of memories from painting our parking spaces when we grow up, seeing what everybody does and what their personalities are like.”
Turner said she has seen everyone work really hard to be able to do something they will always remember.
“This is the first time that the seniors have gotten to do this. There’s been a lot of thought and a lot of work hand drawing the designs,” she said. “They’ve been sending them to me through email. A lot of the parents have helped the students get what design they want, and it represents each child’s personality.”
And what are Giles and Ryan planning for their parking spaces?
“I dressed up as Sam I Am on homecoming. I get told a lot that I look like Sam I Am, so I thought it would be cool to draw that on my parking space,” Giles said.
Ryan added, “I’m doing a sunset and a quote from Zach Bryan: ‘Something in the orange tells me we’re not done.’”
“Hopefully, this can start being a tradition. Hopefully, it inspires the other schools in the county to do it. It will maybe inspire their principals to let the students do some fun activities,” Giles said.
“We’ve got a great group of kids out here,” Turner said. “I’m happy to be offering this to our seniors, and hopefully, the other students will be motivated to be thinking about what their spot will look like in the years to come. I think we’ll beautify the campus and I’m really excited to be out here joining them when we have painting day.”
