Fort Pierce Central High School celebrated a day of Unity through Literacy on March 22, 2007. Students, teachers, administrators and staff participated. The Literacy Council coordinated with the different departments to create diverse lessons related to every content area. Lessons developed by Reading Coach Diane Jones included:

• articles and lessons for culinary arts on the history of the potato chip and a historical restaurant in New Orleans by the name of Dooky Chase,
• articles and lessons for business classes on business leaders of diverse cultures and backgrounds,
• articles and lessons for social studies from Teaching Tolerance website (http://www.tolerance.org) on topics such as “What Responsibilities Accompany Our Rights?,” “This Land is Ours—Native Americans resist the US government’s policy of forced removal in the 19th century,” and “Brown v Board: An American Legacy,” and
• math lessons included African Mende Addition, Islamic Inheritance Mathematics, Chinese Fraction Reducing, Babylonian Square Roots, and many more!

Every class addressed diversity and unity. As the students entered school, they received a purple unity ribbon. In their English classes, students painted their hands and left a handprint on a special wall outside the library. In math, students paced off the distance around the school and calculated how many buildings they would have to stand around to surround the school in one “united” circle. Principal John Williams barbequed hamburgers and hot dogs for those students with perfect attendance during FCAT. During the final class of the day, students stood shoulder to shoulder around the school while the sheriff’s helicopter flew overhead and took a picture of the students.

Feedback from teachers included these comments:

• Fantastic job, Literacy Council!
• I look forward to doing this again next year. Literacy Council, keep up the good work.
• You did a great job of dispensing the material. There was plenty to do, and the students were engaged all period. School wide events (wall, lunch & hands around unity square/rectangle) were innovative—those I saw loved it. Your committee did a fabulous job. I thought it ran very smooth. Give yourselves a pat on the back.

Special appreciation goes to Literacy Council Members Principal Willams, Assistant Principal Kerry Padrick, Ms. Beauchamp, Mr. Narine, Dr. Dickerson, Mr. Curry, Mrs. Curry, Ms. Busch-Smith, Mr. Burn, Ms. Lange, Mr. Krivan, Ms. Jones, Mr. Rodriguez, Ms. Mata, Ms. Sullivan, Ms. Vota, Ms. BJ Jenkins, and Ms. Carol Washington.