Seventh graders from Windham Middle School recently created a mural depicting places in the community that are important to them.

Allison Hopkins, an art teacher at the middle school, said the mural, located in the hallway outside the school’s cafeteria and art room, was the culmination of a “project-based learning” unit on community. Hopkins said teachers worked with students to explore what makes Windham special and how communities are built. The mural, which is in the shape of the town’s municipal borders, was the centerpiece of the unit, with each student contributing a “third place,” or an area outside of home and school that is important to them.

Several of the contributing students described the project as a team effort. Morgan Jones said it helped with collaboration to have everyone on the team drawing something, with the final project showing everyone’s combined interests and the places they like to go to, reflecting the diversity of the seventh-grade community. Jones also noted the number of places chosen, with the wall-sized mural being made up of drawings that were sometimes just inches in size.

For her third place, Jones drew pictures of Tavern Hill Farm and the hiking trails at Donnabeth Lippman Park. Other students who contributed included Hannah Clukey, who drew the logo of It Takes Two Farm, a horse-riding school north of town hall; Marin Miele, who drew the logo of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to honor her family’s congregation; Etta Sparrow, who drew an Adirondack chair to represent a beach in North Windham; Willow Walsh, who originally chose Windham Public Library, but ended up “bouncing around” to multiple other spots due to lack of space; Baileigh McKone and Lilly Doucette, who respectively drew pictures representing tubing and canoeing on Highland Lake; Tyson Beaulieu, who drew a Christmas tree farm that his family had frequented when he was younger; and Troy Prum, who drew the new Windham Middle School, due to open in 2027.

With the construction of the new middle school, which will serve students from both Windham and Raymond, the current middle school is set to shutter. Talks are underway to transform the school building into a community center and municipal building.

Jones, whose father serves on the Windham Town Council, said, should the community center plans go through, the mural would remain part of the building, now open for the entire community to appreciate.

The students also pushed back against the notion that their generation, having grown up amid an onslaught of COVID-19, AI, and social media, lacked the “third places” of previous generations. Walsh said the project proves, even as the youth of today face these issues, they are still able to interact with their community and find locations that are meaningful to them.

“Although we grew up seeing all this, we still know that we can get past it or further away from it by doing these other things not on a screen or inside,” said Beaulieu.