ESLR posters flood campus

You may have noticed the new black and white poster appearing in classrooms all over campus. These are called ESLR (Expected School-wide Learning Results) posters, and they are meant to represent six values that students should be getting out of their experience at CVHS.

The posters were made by visual arts teacher Adrian Lopez’s Graphic Design class after Lopez noticed that older posters on campus featuring the same messages were unlikely to grab students’ attentions.

“The old poster had so much text that I can’t even read it,” he commented. “The first thing people see is an image. We tried to draw people in with the image to get them interested in the text.”

The Graphic Design class chose six images of people who were examples of the expected outcomes of the students’ education at CVHS.

Yoda represents “Knowledge,” “Responsible individuals” is exemplified by Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa shows what “Community Participants” are all about, Eleanor Roosevelt embodies “Life-long Learners,” Martin Luther King Jr. characterizes “Effective Communicators” and Albert Einstein epitomizes “Critical Thinkers.”

“We tried to choose an image that embodied the idea for the students,” Lopez said. “The toughest part was to choose an image that’s powerful and that everyone would recognize.”

Originally, the ideals “Community Participants” and “Life-long Learners” were going to be represented by images of the raising of the American flag at Iwo Jima and a picture of Steve Jobs, but some teachers raised concerns that the posters lacked female role models.  Due to this, the class was prompted to add Mother Teresa and Eleanor Roosevelt.

“We all looked at them before we presented them,” said Lopez. “Once it was brought up, we said ‘Oh, that’s totally true. We need to put women in the ESLRs.’ I told the class and they completely agreed.”

The posters were meant to get students thinking about where they should be learning with the education they’re receiving. Lopez hopes the revised posters will be more likely to prompt students to think about these issues by getting their attention.

“My ultimate goal was for them to be noticed,” said Lopez.

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