It’s not every day that a middle school student gets handed a wall and told, “Make your mark.” But at Mount Olive Schools, that’s exactly what happens every spring when the eighth-grade class creates a permanent mural—a tradition now eight years strong under the guidance of art teacher Adam Schulte.

Each year, students submit design ideas, vote as a class, and shape the final mural collaboratively—often combining multiple elements or swapping in a quote from one draft with the imagery of another. Once the concept is finalized and approved by administration, it’s go time.

This year’s lead artist? Carys Goymerac, a thoughtful and witty eighth grader who moved to Mount Olive from Baldwin, Missouri, in the third grade and has been watching the mural process unfold since she arrived.

“I was definitely excited when my mural got picked,” Carys said. “I’m the director now. I get all the creative power… it’s pretty sick.”

That “power,” as she calls it, comes with responsibility. Carys led the project through every phase—from sketching it out with pencil on the wall to coordinating a small but committed painting crew that rotated daily depending on schedules and availability.

“We’d have anywhere from one or two people to four working at a time,” she said. “And sometimes the little kids would walk by and be like, ‘Are you writing on the wall?’ I’d just say, ‘I know, I’m so bad,’” she laughed. “They think we’re breaking the rules, but really, we’re making something that’s going to last.”

Indeed, the mural isn’t a temporary installation—it’s permanent, and it joins the gallery of past eighth-grade murals that line the elementary hallway, each one a visual time capsule. “The first one we ever did is still there,” Mr. Schulte noted. “We don’t paint over them—we just find a new wall.”

That permanence isn’t lost on Carys. “It’s cool to think that maybe I’ll come back in ten years and it’ll still be there,” she said. “It’s a nice legacy.”

Despite calling this her first mural, Carys dove into the work with confidence. She “eyeballed” the scale-up from a sketch on printer paper—no gridding, no tiling, just instinct and experience. “She’s done a fantastic job,” Schulte said. “It’s her first time with a project like this, but she’s taken real ownership.”

For Carys, art is personal, even if she doesn’t yet have a lot of close friends who share the interest. “Honestly, there aren’t a ton of kids here who love art,” she said. “But I do. And I’ve learned a lot from this.”

The mural itself, while still in its final stages during the interview, is already drawing admiration. “There’s a bit more detailing and touch-up left to do,” she said. “But it’s almost there.”

The work—spanning roughly three to four weeks of class periods, plus cleanup, coordination, and care—amounts to dozens of hours of effort. And through it all, Carys never lost her sense of humor or her drive. “It’s tiring,” she admitted. “But it’s totally worth it.”

Backed by a teacher who once taught first and second grade before finding his calling in art, and surrounded by a school that encourages student ownership and creative risk-taking, Carys and her mural now join a proud Mount Olive tradition—where learning to lead means leaving something beautiful behind.