A Beautiful Butterfly

To those who can look through the scarred, cluttered, scratched, rusty, dusty, grimy appearance of a disused building and reveal the strength and beauty underneath: My admiration and thanks. The gifts of many such people were displayed at St. Elizabeth's back-to-school night this month. The evening featured the usual menu of general announcements, booster business, and classroom visits, with a truly wonderful treat at the end: A tour of SES Inc, an old laundry building transformed into a learning lab for life skills that is not only functional for these students, but is absolutely stunning.

The obvious flaws might have been the first things to catch the eye when St. E's secured the building and worked with WMAR's Built Upon a Dream program to plan the project, but a deeper, closer examination revealed huge potential. The loving attention of a small village of people brought out the obvious beauty in a space less talented people might have turned away from.

Sounds a lot like teaching special needs students sometimes.

It's a delight to see a population that so often settles for less receive something truly spectacular. 

More, probably better pictures than the ones I snapped at back-to-school night are on St. Elizabeth's website.