Ascension senior teaches her own lessons on caring

By RELMA HARGUS
Advocate staff writer
Published: Feb 5, 2007

 

Advocate staff photo by RICHARD ALAN HANNON

Stephanie Coleman, right, an Ascension Catholic High School senior, made a prayer blanket for Ascension Catholic Primary School fourth-grader Brant Theriot as a way to show him she ‘supported him and recognized him as a hero.’ Coleman was inspired by the lessons of her religion teacher, Lydia Bellina. Theriot suffers from a muscular disorder, and each tassel on the blanket has a prayer for him associated with it.
 

Advocate staff photo by RICHARD ALAN HANNON
 

Stephanie Coleman is using other students’ senior projects to complete her own.

During their final year at Ascension Catholic High School in Donaldsonville, students are required to complete a project that helps their community or people in need.

Coleman says she believes it will help the community for people to know what her classmates are doing and so she contacted The Advocate to get the word out about a couple of the efforts.

“If people see other people doing good deeds, I believe it will encourage them to help others too,” Coleman said.

The senior project has been a longtime assignment of religion teacher Lydia Bellina.

Coleman describes the project as “learning through action.”

Two of Coleman’s early reports are about how fellow students used boxes and blankets to show their concern for others.

Box it up
To let the children of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital know they are remembered each day, classmate Sara Zeringue made prayer boxes.

Zeringue worked for more than a month after school constructing small wooden boxes to send to patients at the Memphis, Tenn., hospital.

Other seniors helped decorate the boxes with encouraging pictures, words and phrases and wrote notes telling the recipients the students were praying for them.

“Sara’s close friends and others who believe in the power of prayer volunteered,” Coleman said, adding that participation in someone else’s project can’t be substituted for doing one’s own senior project.

“I just want the kids to have hope. They need to know to never give up, because there are so many people praying for them every day,” Zeringue said.

“In a way, the boxes represent their hearts, because the children can store their hopes and dreams in the boxes through the objects they put inside them, just like they hold their hopes and dreams in their hearts,” she said.

Once the boxes were decorated, the seniors inserted small toys in them.

Blanket love
Unwilling to wait until their senior year, several sophomores — students of Bellina in another class — were among those making prayer blankets for people associated with Ascension Catholic School.

Bellina had used making prayer blankets as an example when she introduced the senior project requirements to the older students.

“That project didn’t count toward our senior project,” Coleman said, but several students gave it a try anyway.

She made a blanket for Brant Theriot, a fourth-grader with a muscular disorder.

“I did it mainly because I had seen Brant around school, and I wanted him to know I supported him and recognized him as a hero,” she said.

Some 10th-graders liked the idea and joined in, she added.

After making the blankets and saying a silent prayer for the recipient, the students either signed their names or tied a knot to ribbons sewn onto the blanket.

Recipients responded with thank-you cards, and some said they used the prayer blankets for comfort during their illnesses, Coleman said.