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The school year in pictures Mail Tribune / Jim Craven Megan Myers stands before her illustrated view of a year at South Medford High, which now adorns the walls in teacher Connie Valois� classroom. On Monday, Valois threw a reception to honor the artist, a senior at South. South student�s mural gets it all in By Vicki Guarino With paint brush and vivid imagination, a South Medford High senior spent part of her summer vacation reliving school life. The result is a lively parade of characters spanning four walls and part of the ceiling in a second-floor classroom. Megan Myers� pictorial of a year at South begins with football players and ends with a blue-gowned graduate. In between, she portrays friends, classmates and teachers playing, practicing and working. South celebrates homecoming, rehearses a play, tunes up a concert, wrestles, swims and struts through a glitzy disco dance. The brown-haired girl in a back corner, holding a paint brush, is a self-portrait. It�s a new look for math teacher Corinne Valois� classroom. Valois was so pleased she hosted a reception Monday to give Megan�s friends a preview of the work. With two weeks yet of summer vacation, the event was the first social gathering of South�s 2000-01 school year. Invited guests � a couple dozen teachers and administrators from South and McLoughlin Middle School, parents and students � spent the lunch hour visiting, nibbling cheese and crackers, smiling for snapshots and recalling the various events that inspired Megan�s mural. Classmates congratulated her; faculty complimented her. "The reason we teach is because of you, and people like you," Valois said as she introduced the artist to her admirers. The mural will become part of Megan�s senior project, a major work to be completed outside school. She still will have to research and prepare a report and public presentation to complete the graduation requirement. The idea for the mural began small, as a simple request from Valois for Megan to paint light-hearted portraits of Valois and fellow teacher Jerry Hagstrom on one wall in her classroom, which doubles as the center for student leadership activities. Valois and Hagstrom share leadership teaching duties "I said, �Well, how much wall space do you have?� " Megan recalls. Suddenly, every square foot of white wall in Valois� room was Megan�s to color. Megan wanted to paint everything about her high school. Despite three years of experience at South, she turned to the yearbook as a guide so that she didn�t leave out anything. With help from a friend, Bri Gonzalez, the work took 81 hours. She worked from 7 a.m., when custodians opened the building, to 4 p.m., when they locked the doors and set the alarms. For their assistance with ladders and paint buckets, custodians too have a place on the wall. Hagstrom appears on one side of the back wall, captioned with his South nickname, Haggy. Valois stands opposite, with shaggy dark roots showing through bleached-blonde hair. Painting the truth in hair coloring was Valois� idea, and her only stylistic suggestion to Megan. "I said, �You know, I�m not really blonde. We should have a little reality here,� " Valois said. Although Megan was apprehensive about the project � first, about getting it started, then about getting done before school started � the work itself was a joy. "There are not many things I get up that early for,�� she says. And best of all, she adds, "it turned out way better than I expected." Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA