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Gabe Graber

A student wrote this acknowledging their appreciation for the FFA teacher, Amber Samson, and the Industrial Technology teacher, Tim Crowder. Their classrooms are close to each other.

Last Wednesday at PCM High School, paper four-leaf clovers, or shamrocks, began appearing all over the school. This was partially because of St. Patrick’s day, which is on March 17 this year. However, it was mainly for the purpose of kindness. Every shamrock has a message on it written by a student, thanking the teacher of the classroom it is closest to for something. There are over 60 shamrocks in total around the school. Samantha Pohl, the high school instructional coach, explained further about the meaning of shamrocks.
“If somebody is thinking about open-enrolling their student at PCM, going to our Facebook page is probably one of the first things they would do,” explained Pohl. “We just want to make sure that our social media has cool things like this on there for people to see. For March and St. Patrick’s day, we are going with the slogan ‘lucky to be a mustang.’”
Last week, on Wednesday, March 2, all PCM students met in their advisory classes for social emotional learning (SEL) per usual. This time, every student was given a green paper shamrock with the instruction of writing some sort of kind note to a teacher of their choice. Then they taped it on the wall outside that teacher’s door. Some teacher’s walls are covered with shamrocks and some only have a few, but everyone has something outside their door. Messages varied from “thank you for what you do” to being somewhat personal. The main idea was to show kindness in an unusual way and why PCM students are “lucky to be mustangs.” Some students brought the shamrocks outside the high school.
“Some people made shamrocks for an elementary teacher they had that inspired them or a middle school teacher they loved,” Pohl said. “I sent the shamrocks to those buildings and they got put up by that teacher’s door. That is really good for those teachers because they know they made a positive impact on that student.”
Pohl also mentioned that PCM has never done anything like this before and that feedback from students has been very positive. So far, the project has turned out to be great for everyone: the notes only take a couple seconds to write and can brighten someone’s day.
“That is what we are trying to convey with this shamrock project,” Pohl said. “The whole point is why we are lucky to be mustangs, lucky to be at PCM, instead of anywhere else.”