New time capsule holds pupils' dreams
Several kids wrote their names and Monday's date on the lid.
By SEAN BARRON
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
YOUNGSTOWN -- Tanisha Lopez was happy to bury her idea of becoming a chef, opening her own restaurant and being a veterinarian in a decade.
Shaquala Harmon was glad to take her ambition of wanting to work in a bank and a nursing home and subject it to the same fate.
"I love animals," said Tanisha, 14, an eighth-grader at P. Ross Berry Middle School on Youngstown's East Side. "I don't care if they're mean or poisonous."
The girls' sentiments, along with other pupils' wishes, were contained in a time capsule that was buried Monday at the school and will remain in place for 10 years before being unearthed Nov. 20, 2016. Also part of the kids' project was the planting of a tree with soil brought in from the youngsters' former school, East Middle School.
About 32 seventh- and eighth-grade pupils from three classes spearheaded the projects, explained Beth McCracken, who teaches science and social studies to grades seven and eight. The capsule has envelopes with photographs of pupils at a recent dedication ceremony ushering in Berry as well as pictures of some on their last day at East.
What they left
Some pupils left personal memories, messages, letters or poems; others had expressions of future dreams and aspirations. The capsule also contains scrapbook pages and a host of written wishes the kids in grades five through eight hope will come true.
Two of 13-year-old Shaquala's wishes are that kids will get along better with one another and that she will work in a nursing facility "to help old people," she said. Another youngster wrote that he wants to play in the NFL and use part of his earnings to donate a swimming pool to the school, McCracken said.
McCracken's pupils spent part of their day Monday busily wrapping with duct tape and securing with a trash bag the plastic container that serves as a capsule before burying it at the school. Several kids wrote their names and Monday's date on the lid and sides of the container; someone wrote on the lid in large colored letters: "Hello future people, thank you 4 opening our time capsule," "Remember me 4ever," and "RIP East."
Tree-planting
Preceding the capsule's burial was the planting of a 6-foot-high silver maple tree, donated by Home Depot Inc. Pupils took several buckets of soil from East and placed the dirt around the tree, named "East Panther" after that school's team mascot. Some of the youngsters will measure the tree's trunk and chart its growth, McCracken explained.
Other related project ideas in the works are placing steppingstones around the site of the capsule, carving the tree's name on a piece of wood and having eighth-graders create a "countdown" clock to remind someone to open the capsule at the right time, McCracken continued.
McCracken said that her pupils as well as those in Ann Stonemyer's math class and Trish Alexander's language arts class worked on the project. The time capsule, however, contains contributions by all of the school's pupils who participated, she noted.