ABSTRACT
Hickory High School, like many American high schools, is a red-brick building with nondescript box-like additions pieced around an original architectural structure. Large parking lots and athletic fields, dotted by mature maple trees in full color on this autumn day, surround the building. Inside the building, this small town school has an impressive flag display in its cafeteria. National flags from around the globe hang on poles and stands all along the walls of the large oval-shaped room. There are forty-five or fifty flags, many from Latin America, but also Europe, Asia, and Africa. Each flag represents the home country of a student (or their parents). As Susan, a biology teacher, explains, they want their students “to start having an understanding that the world is much bigger than Hickory, or our state, or even the United States in general.” She thinks that many of her students “unfortunately, haven’t been out of this area.” She wants them to learn that there is a “a lot more out there beyond them.” Although perhaps a small gesture, the school hopes that the daily, prominent reminder of the flags— and the diversity of the students they represent—helps to send this message. But the school’s hopes go deeper than just cultivating an awareness of the world beyond Hickory; teachers and administrators also want the students to develop a conscience to go along with a global awareness. On one large wall in a main atrium, a beautiful mosaic depicts the message “Never pass up an opportunity to do good” and prominent posters in the principal’s office celebrate a Gulf Coast relief trip recently completed and an upcoming trip to post-earthquake Haiti.
