Teacher Cuts Through Coronavirus With Messages On Kids' Driveways

LOGANVILLE, GA — A teacher at W.J. Cooper Elementary School spread a little shelter-in-place sunshine to her students last Friday by writing messages in chalk on the driveways to their homes.

Alexis Priest, a third-grade teacher at Cooper and a 2009 graduate of Grayson High School, thought up the idea after making chalk art with her own daughter. “It just kind of hit me,” she said. “It would be nice to let them (her students) know, hey, I’m still here.”

After first telling parents she was coming, Priest spent about six hours Friday afternoon writing the same message in chalk — a name, followed by “I miss you, Love, Mrs. Priest” — on the driveways of all 28 of her students. Each chalk masterpiece took about 5 minutes, Priest said.

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Once she finished, she said, her email box was “flooded” with messages from parents, many with reports of students smiling “ear to ear.” One student who had time to prepare even left a drawing of a rainbow waiting for Priest, held down by a rock on the child’s driveway. “It was sweet,” Priest said.

Sunshine eventually gave way to rain, though, as the weekend’s storms washed the art away. “I was bummed,” Priest said. Fortunately, though, she saved pictures of everything, sharing them online with her students.

She also capped it off Wednesday with a final chalk message on her own driveway: “We can do this” and “#flattenthecurve.”

“It was a lot of fun,” Priest said Thursday.

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