Lockheed Elementary Students Help Design New Playground Art

MARIETTA, Ga. – Lockheed Elementary's playground is getting a new art display, and the students are helping to create it.

For the fourth year in a row, Marietta City Schools partnered with Paint Love, a nonprofit that brings art programming and murals to schools and community organizations, to create a large-scale art installation for the school. This year's project centers on the 8 Habits of Highly Effective People, the framework Lockheed uses to teach students proactivity, communication, and problem-solving.

Paint Love partnered with Lockheed's Student Lighthouse Team, a group of student leaders from each grade who are representatives of classroom mission statements, to brainstorm ideas before any paint hit a panel. Students helped shape the project's theme and story, and one student's idea — creating friendship and solving problems through math, using the 8 habits — became the throughline for the whole installation.

The result will be 16 panels installed on the playground, two for each habit: one panel with the habit's name and one image panel that tells its story. The habits, in order, are:

1. Be proactive

2. Begin with the end in mind

3. Put first things first

4. Think win-win

5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood

6. Synergize

7. Sharpen the saw

8. Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs

Paint Love builds its programming on a trauma-informed model, using regulation tools and different ways to process emotions through art. For students, that means the mural project is more than a beautification effort. It's a chance to work through big ideas and feelings in a hands-on, creative way.