ODESSA, TX (KMID/ KPEJ) — Students at an Odessa middle school started the pencil project, writing positive messages and handing them off to a friend.
At Wilson and Young Middle School, these aren’t your typical number two pencils.
Each of them holds a handwritten message. A creative idea 13-year-old Samuel Stowe originally started with sticky notes.
“You look great today, you have an excellent smile, just different things that we thought we would like to hear,” Wilson and Young Middle School student Samuel Stowe said.
From sticky notes on lockers to positive messages on pencils, students at Wilson and Young are hoping to start a trend.
“I think it’d be a really great thing for everyone to pick up on. It’ll just brighten someone’s day and make someone feel good about themselves,” Wilson and Young Middle School student Bailey Short said.
The Post-Its were not staying on the lockers, so a group of kids came up with a way to make the message stick.
Here’s how it works, students write a message on a pencil something like you’re on point and smile, it looks good on you. That was a note written by seventh grader Makayla Madrid.
“I thought that if someone told them that it looks good on them that they might smile and make someone else smile,” student Makayla Madrid said.
Then, students give the pencil to someone who might be having a bad day.
A movement starting with sixth graders that worked it’s way to the eighth grade hallway.
“I think it encourages a lot of people and makes people feel a lot better about themselves,” Madrid said.
ECISD is proud their middle schooler’s are behind the pencil project.
“When kids care about somebody else more than themselves and how it impacts their feelings and all that, it can’t be anything but good for education in general,” ECISD Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education Roy Garcia said.
Wilson and Young Middle School has 500 pencils and so far, about 200 of them are labeled with special messages.
