After more than a two-year hiatus, Legacy Day returned to the Blake campus bringing students, teachers, staff and parent volunteers back together for a day of connection across campuses. The theme of the day was Sharing Stories, Sharing Smiles and the goal was for community members to get to know each other and find joy in their shared experiences.

The day began with everyone gathering in the gym for the traditional Convocation ceremony. Following the ceremony, Legacy groups spread out around campus to work on service activities to support Blake’s community partners Learning in Style, Alight and CAPI, organizations devoted to helping immigrants and refugees as they settle into their new homes. Legacy groups put together smile kits of items that the organizations requested or suggested and made fabric collages for immigrant families to hang in their new homes. 

In addition to the service activities, each member of the Blake community contributed to a community art piece designed and built by Middle School art teacher Seexeng Lee and added their ribbons to the Early Learning Center construction site.

Throughout campus, groups could find 42 banners each featuring a Minneapolis or St. Paul high school student or recent graduate who is an immigrant. The banners, part of an exhibit by Green Card Voices, a nonprofit that connects immigrants and their communities through multimedia storytelling, include a bit of each person’s story and a QR code, which link to a video of the person sharing more of their story. 

“People, including children and teenagers, have experienced, are experiencing, difficult circumstances around the world,” says Blake Service Learning Director and Legacy Day Co-Chair Lisa Sackreiter, explaining the purpose of integrating the exhibit into the Legacy Day activities. “We can listen and bear witness to their unique stories. Our children can know that there are reasons that people want to or have to uproot their lives and that it is hard. They can also see and hear the courage, the hopes, the dreams that sustain them and consider their own lives. In doing so we can create greater understanding of one another, ourselves, and our community.”

The day ended with a final gathering in the gym to celebrate the accomplishments and the connections made. 

To see photos from the day, visit Blake’s Flickr site.