by Taylor Adams ‘27

Art students take on a new project as English department teacher Christopher Goodrich hopes to enhance the environment in his room. Goodrich’s room has no windows, and he has turned to the help of students to paint a mural of trees on the walls and brighten the room up.

Goodrich moved into his room last year when the school tried to arrange English teachers to be in rooms close together. Immediately he noticed the gloominess in the room and wanted to find a way to brighten the room up. He has been thinking of having a mural in his room since the beginning and finally gathered the people to paint it.

The climate of the room suffers from the absence of nature. “It’s depressing a bit. There’s no natural light,” Goodrich remarked. One of Goodrich’s students and mural painter, junior Karma Moore, noted that she sometimes has difficulty focusing when working in the room because of its lack of light.

To combat this need for a better environment, Goodrich asked art students to paint a mural in his room, and they began at the start of the school year. The mural involves a series of trees in different seasons in each corner of the room. While the base colors have been laid down already, the heavy amount of details and process of finishing the paintings fully will take longer. Moore reported that progress can be made quickly with artists coming in every day at lunch to paint. However, with retakes, teacher meetings, and college applications for seniors, not every day is available. Students working on it hope to have it done by December, but it’s possible it may extend into January.

Goodrich explained how the lack of natural sunlight had been having a negative effect on his mental health. He revealed that last year he and his students would occasionally visit his neighboring room, English teacher Patricia Jasnow’s, just to see the light and views through the windows in her room. He has added lights and many decorations that made the room less bland. Even with this, the absence of windows was very noticeable and took energy in the room down.

Both he and the students working on the project expect the mural to make the room a more comfortable and enjoyable environment.

“It’ll just make me a happier person,” Goodrich expressed. The mural will add an interesting element to the room and create a more energetic atmosphere that will encourage more interaction when in the room.