West Hempstead High School honors victims of school violence with garden

West Hempstead High School student Rabiya Khan remembers sitting in school this past Valentine’s Day — a day that’s meant to celebrate love, she said.

“I looked at my phone and I got the breaking news notification that there was a school shooting in Parkland,” Khan, 17, said. “When we got home, we watched the news and saw the severity of it, and then there were a lot of [reports] from Parkland, specifically from the students who were involved, of how they never thought it would happen to them. And that was a really big eye-opener for us, that we needed to do something.”

So, West Hempstead’s National Honor Society students and student council got to work toward a common goal: kick-starting an effort that would culminate in a finished product to honor victims of school violence.

The students ultimately decided to plant a garden in front of their school for the cause in the shape of the letters W and H for West Hempstead. The school held a ceremony on Wednesday to officially open the “Garden for a Better Tomorrow.”

Jacqueline Lawson advises the National Honor Society in addition to teaching ninth and tenth grade English. She and other administrators listened to the students brainstorm ideas and helped them come up with a plan.

“First they thought about wearing a certain color or doing some sort of poster,” Lawson said. “And then they ended up coming up with this idea of a garden. They said, why don’t we have some sort of plantings to commemorate not only what happened in Florida, but any victim of school violence.”

The garden consists of 140 begonias and marigolds and a Japanese maple tree, all donated by Fischetti Landscaping and Garden Center in West Hempstead. The grounds crew planted the flowers prior to the ceremony and the students planted the tree as part of the event.

Representatives from each grade level made a speech and West Hempstead’s acapella group performed “Home” by Daughtry and “Pompeii” by Bastille.

The organizers of the garden felt strongly about getting all students involved, even if they weren’t planting or performing at the event. So, they had everyone vote on a quote to put on a plaque in the garden. They decided on Mahatma Gandhi’s “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

In addition, student council president Aya Zubi, 16, said that during the aftermath of Parkland, she and her peers came up with a writing assignment for the student body.

“We just wanted to reflect on how you get your news, if it’s right information, do you feel safe in school, and is it a good idea to have certain things in school available for you just to feel safe in school,” Zubi said. “Because people didn’t feel safe after the shootings.”

Junior class co-president and acapella singer Autumn Collins said this has been a great opportunity to unite students, faculty, and people living in the area.

“This is a really big thing that we’re doing, especially in the community of West Hempstead,” Collins said. “Since we’re not too big of a community, we can all come together easily. I think it was easy for people to get behind this and support it.”

Collins and her peers do believe that change is possible. “The fact that kids go to school to better themselves and make this world a better place and they die, it’s not okay,” she said. “I feel like with this garden, it should carry on nationwide about how we need to grow in order to make the United States and our communities and every school better and safer.”

Lawson said the planting will now be an annual event at West Hempstead High School. The student organizers hope to continue getting the community involved in the process as the garden expands.

After all, in order to bloom, you have to grow.