For the beginning of the school year, Mrs. Renn and Mrs. Slater, the art teachers, had a creative idea to make a hummingbird mural. Graceful and spirited hummingbirds are drawn and cut out by each class at St. Philip, Kindergarten to the 8th grade, to represent a schoolwide project of doing small things with great love. This project combined all the colorful hummingbirds that each student made to create a huge and beautiful mural in the Art Room.

The mural is located on the back wall of the art room. Each hummingbird is colored with either watercolor or oil pastels. They surround a beautiful quote of Mother Teresa’s, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” St. Philip’s School continues to celebrating Catholic values by teaching students about the recent canonization of Mother Teresa, a wonderful and inspiring role model that Falcons should look up to.

Each class watched a short video from the 2009 documentary “Dirt!” about the tale of the hummingbird told by Wangari Maathai, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. Legend says that one night there was a forest fire and all of the animals and wildlife ran away. The fire kept on getting bigger and bigger and no one tried to stop it. Until a little hummingbird appeared and help put water in the forest fire using his small beak, carrying water drop by drop. The other great forest animals doubted at him, but he continued to carry water. The hummingbird represents  hope in the world, a sign of doing the best you can.