Recently, Lowellville has displayed the spirit of love and kindness through several heartwarming activities to celebrate Valentine’s Day. The elementary school had its annual parties where students created a unique box to store their valentines. In the high school, Sources Of Strength peer leaders created positive sticky notes that were dispersed on students’ lockers, the high school bathrooms, and outside of teachers’ rooms. Members of the National Honors Society and Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) made valentines to give to the residents who live in the Lowellville Park Apartments next to the school.
Sources of Strength Advisor Mrs. Vivo says, “The sticky notes on the lockers was an idea created by our Peer Leaders, they focused on the Positive Friend portion of the Strength Wheel with a Positivity Campaign. Our members wanted to brighten everyone’s Valentine’s Day week by surprising them with a positive quote. Each Peer Leader was given a sticky notebook of hearts or bubble sticky notebook by me and spent time in their homeroom and study halls gathering and writing down as many positive quotes that they and their friends could find in preparation for Operation Positivity.”
This is NHS and SADD’s second year making valentines for the apartments and this year, the members have been busy finishing them up, with their goal being to make one thousand of them. These valentines consisted of various cute drawings such as dinosaurs and pizza with sweet messages and puns written on them. Lowellville students, Christian Coira, Elizabeth Rossi, Kenzie McCormick, and Kyle England all stayed after school on Thursday, February 13th to deliver them to the apartments.
NHS and SADD member, Kenzie McCormick says, “The delivering process was a very heartfelt experience. Two residents were sitting in the main lobby that we got to talk to and both were extremely happy and sweet to us.”
Lowellville senior, Christian Coira says, “It made me feel really good knowing I was impacting the community by visiting the residents there, knowing they don’t usually get a lot of visitors. They all seemed excited to see us and it was just overall a great feeling seeing them so happy.”
Another NHS member, Kyle England says,” It was nice to go over and meet some of the people living there even if I only talked to them for a couple of minutes. It just made me feel good in general to do something that brightened people’s days.”
The elementary students stepped up their game this year with their unique Valentine’s gift boxes ranging from iconic drinks from fast food places, popular characters from video games or movies, and many unique animals.
First-grade teacher, Ms. Choma says her favorite box from her class was the iconic Fortnite llama made by student Baelleigh Petrus pictured below. “Llama” is a colorful pinata often seen throughout the game that gives the players gifts such as healing, and building materials when destroyed. It’s shaped like a normal llama with a body covered in different stripes of purple, pink, blue, and yellow, topped off with big cartoonish eyes. This is no doubt one of the most memorable symbols throughout the game.
Sixth grader, Delaney Sontag’s Starbucks cup pictured below was a popular hit and was voted as the favorite box by both sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Diloreto, and fifth-grade teacher, Ms. Sanders. Her cup was a light pink color with red and silver hearts all around. The real showstopper, however, was the whipped cream on top that seemed to almost be overflowing, drizzled with chocolate syrup.
Staying on the theme of drinks, Mrs. Havrilla’s top pick this year was Skylar Higgins’ Baja Blast-inspired box, inspired by Taco Bell. The vibrant turquoise cup was displayed with a bold purple straw, and, of course, featured the iconic purple Taco Bell logo, making it both eye-catching and easily recognizable.
From sweet valentines getting ready to be delivered, to unique boxes to store sweet treats given by their classmates. LHS students were able to celebrate Valentine’s Day in many exciting ways. Throughout the community, this holiday served as a way to give back, displayed generosity from all students, and was able to spread joy from kindergarten through high school, and even extended outside of the school. Valentine’s Day is not just about romantic gestures, but can also be a day that celebrates kindness, community, and friendship, and Lowellville proved just that.
