Students at the Henry C. Lea School (47th and Locust) returned from spring break today to find a giant rabbit hiding in a stairwell. This bunny stands about six feet tall and guards a little nook between the school’s first and second floors and is part of a program that organizers hope will transform Lea’s appearance.

Painted by muralist Jeremiah Johnson, the rabbit is part of Lea’s Mural Arts Program, a cooperative project between students, their art teacher, a former visual merchandiser and volunteers.

Like many public schools in Philadelphia, Lea’s interior has suffered as the school struggles to recruit and retain teachers and serve students’ educational needs on a tight budget. The school was built in 1914, two years after the construction of nearby West Philadelphia High School. Lea’s Visual Arts Program gives students a chance to leave their mark on the school, which serves grades K-8.

“It shows that people care and it gives students a hand in recreating their environment,” said John Try, Lea’s art teacher.

Last week’s spring break gave them a chance to do some major work on Lea’s first floor, where it’s kindergarten, first and second graders spend most of their time and where the giant rabbit, which looks like it jumped straight out of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, stands guard.

The rabbit fits well with the first floor theme in the beautification project – the ground.  The second floor, where third through sixth graders learn, will be painted to look like a biosphere, complete with clouds. Seventh and eighth graders are on the fourth floor, where space will be the theme. The three levels are the visual expression of the overall theme of “ascendency”to reflect students’ movement up through the school.

“They’re ascending in terms of age, but also in terms of maturity so I wanted the theme to reflect that,” Try said.

The program is focusing on transitional and high-traffic parts of the building like hallways, stairwells, cafeterias and rest rooms, where research shows that students feel most vulnerable to violence and bullying.

Yvette Almaguer, a visual merchandiser for luxury retailers like Lancome and Baccarat Crystal for 15 years who is now a graduate student at Penn’s Graduate School of Education, is taking the skills she learned in the retail world and applying them to help improve the aesthetic climate at Lea.

“Everyone talks about school climate,” she said during a break from painting last Thursday. “Positive school climate is not just about behavior, it’s also what you see around you.”

Try, Almaguer, volunteers and a team of students have been meeting after school on Fridays to plan and work on a number of visual projects.

Try and Almaguer hope to oversee the installation of at least a dozen more murals in the school. But they need help. Almaguer has reached out to community groups in West Philly and hopes to attract much-needed grant money for the ongoing project. She also hopes to add a research component that will systematically  investigate her hunch that the improved aesthetic appearance of a school may lead to improved student attitudes about being at school.

Eighth grader Gibron Wynne, a member of the visual arts team, spent his spring break days at school working on the project.

“I feel like I want to leave a little legacy here at my school when I leave,” he said. “They told me I didn’t have to do it for my spring break, but I wanted to do it.”

Wynne will leave his neighborhood school next year to attend the well-regarded magnet high school Academy at Palumbo in South Philly.

The goal of the Visual Arts Program is to get more students like him involved in changing the school. But the program needs adults too. Most importantly, Almaguer said, it needs Lea parents to participate with the students. They also need grant writers to help raise money to keep the project going and mural artists to help bring the “ascendancy” theme to life.

Wynne elaborated a little further on his ideas about what “ascendancy” means to him.

“If you make it to the third floor that means you made it to the stars,” he said.

Those interested in helping out can write Almaguer at yarecess — at — gmail.com or call 917-602-7998.

Here is video of the interview with Yvette Almaguer: