Ocean mural of student-painted tiles welcomes back Oliveira Elementary students
Sea level rise is a global problem, but Oliveira Elementary School in Fremont has welcomed the ocean in a fun way with a friendly mural created with student- and staff-painted tiles, organized by teachers Amy Twisselman and Gina Song.
The project started as a river, before merging with the sea. Independently of each other, the two teachers both came up with the idea of doing a rock river installation with rocks hand painted by students. Twisselman was inspired by a student’s grandmother, who left painted rocks around the community as legacy for a daughter who passed away. Song had done a rock painting project at her son’s school from the book “Only One You” by Linda Kranz. With playful images of rocks painted to look like fish, the book takes kids through advice about individuality and making a difference. Principal Linda Anderson connected the two teachers, kicking off a shared project.
Unfortunately, the school’s terrain with unruly tree roots made finding a place for the rock river difficult. Then Song had another idea. A Kindergarten teacher, she works next to a tunnel that cuts through the building. “I remember thinking a year or so back just walking through the hallway, Oh it would be cool to turn the hallway into an ocean!” The project evolved into a tile mural.
Song and Twisselman created a lesson plan teachers could use to introduce the project to students, and presented the idea at an October staff meeting in 2023. Says Song, “It was a project that we had been thinking about for a while, so when we got the green light for it, it was fun.”
Of the lesson plan, Twisselman says the goal is for kids to think, “What I’m doing with this tile is, I’m not just drawing a fish, but I’m drawing a fish that represents me or a fish that I want to be my legacy as I leave this school.”
The project also brought together two colleagues who didn’t have many previous chances to collaborate, with Twisselman teaching 3rd and 4th Grades, and Song Kindergarten. Song mentioned, “Working with Amy really helped because she’s very artistic.” Song handled logistics and organization, while Twisselman loaned her projector for key parts of the project.
Over winter break, Twisselman and Song took the tiles home and spray painted them different shades of blue. Fremont Unified School District’s facilities department painted the hallway light blue, providing adhesive to attach the tiles and scaffolding. In March, students were ready to paint their fishes in the school makerspace, Ollie’s Nest. Finished tiles were coated with sealant over spring break. This is when time (and tide) started running out. Song says, “We were like, There’s only three months left of school. We’ve got to get everybody to do this. That’s when all the hard work started.”
The scale was daunting. Twisselman describes, “At [spring break] there were 576 tiles that were finished; we just needed a couple of classes to finish up. At this point there are over 600 tiles up in that hallway. Which is pretty rad.”
But tiles alone don’t tell the whole fish story. The two teachers drew kelp and stenciled ocean life to fill out the space. During May, they worked before and after school, and on one weekend. “We were just trying to get it done whenever we had time,” says Song. “Before school, fifteen minutes, or during our prep time, half an hour here or there…random times throughout the day. Whenever we had a free moment we would go and finish painting.”
Twisselman shares, “There were times where I was definitely feeling some pressure from my husband, like ‘Why are you still working on this? You need to come home.’ But it wasn’t something stressful that I resented doing. It was something I really loved and was enjoying.”
“At one point we were up on our scaffold painting the quote from the end of the book,” she recalls, laughing. “It was so dusty; it’s like a wind tunnel in there. We were both having allergies, we were squatting in weird positions and craning our necks to try to get the right angle for these letters. And we were like ‘What are we doing up here? Are we going to be able to finish in time? I don’t know.’” Other teachers and staff pitched in, and the mural was completed for the end of the school year.
Colorful tiles paint a picture of unity and individuality, representing the school as a ‘school.’ Of course, Song and Twisselman made their own contributions. Inspired by childhood visits to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Twisselman painted a pair of seahorses representing her and her daughter. Song painted the cute orange Cheep Cheep Fish from the Super Mario Games, in honor of the video games she played with her son.
In keeping with the quote above the mural–“There’s only one you in this great big world. Make it a better place”–students were excited to play a role in beautifying their school. Twisselman says, “Students would often walk through with their parents when they were getting picked up. They would get so excited to show their parents, ‘This one’s my tile, this is my friend’s tile. Oh, look at this one! I really like the way this one looks.’ It was fun to see families engaging with it too and hearing the sense of pride students had in their work and being able to show it off to their families.”
Twisselman hopes that this will be a legacy for current and future students. “We put a lot in there, but there’s still a lot of space left to fill!”
Watch a short video documentary of the project by Oliveira 2nd Grade teacher Kevin Hammond on YouTube.
