Alec Patton 0:05 This is high tech, high unboxed. I'm Alec Patton, and I want to tell you up front, this is a heavy episode. If you've got kids nearby, I would wait to listen to it another time. I'm going to pause for a moment so you can switch it off. If this isn't a good time to listen you okay, I'm gonna get right into it on June 21 2011 Sean Fuchs, who was 15 years old, and his 13 year old brother Kyle, were shot and killed by their father, who then committed suicide. Sean was a freshman at High Tech High Chula Vista. The following year, the school put up a mural honoring his memory. A few years later, the school expanded its 12th grade wing, the mural was on one of the walls, so it came down and went into storage. Then on September 29 2025 it went up again, now fully restored. This episode is a conversation with the teacher who brought that mural into the world, Patrick Yurick. Patrick joined High Tech High Chula Vista as an art teacher in 2008 the year after it opened, it was his first full time job. After college, he would teach there for five years. Patrick now works at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education. He's also CEO of 100 hands Learning Lab, which is a small design studio that is focused on working with social justice organizations. Patrick co founded it with two of Sean Fuchs former classmates. I started teaching at High Tech High Chula Vista in 2014 had he lived, Sean would have graduated just before I arrived. I've known Patrick for years, and when I worked at High Tech High Chula Vista, I walked by the mural every day, but I didn't know much about it until we recorded this interview. At this point, you might be wondering why we're telling this story. The easy answer is that I love sharing stories of great projects, and this, which became known as the Imagine mural, was just a really awesome project, but clearly there's more to it than that. I'm sharing this story because I never got to meet Sean, and I wish I had, and I'm sharing it because I know a lot of people who worked on the mural who wanted to honor Sean's life and who had to grieve his horrific loss when they were themselves, very young. For Patrick, at a time when Very little was clear, making a mural to honor Sean was obviously the right thing to do. I'm sharing this conversation with you in the same spirit, and before you hear it, you need a little bit of background information. Sean started at High Tech High Chula Vista as a ninth grader in 2010 High Tech High has elementary schools and middle schools, but he hadn't been any of those, so he was totally new to the system. When Sean came to the school, Colleen Green was the principal, though we called him directors at High Tech High and Ray Trinidad was the dean. The following year, Lillian HSU took over as director. I'm explaining that up front, because during the interview, Patrick and I just refer to them without explaining who they are. Also Patrick mentions Larry Rosenstock, founding CEO of High Tech High and one last thing, the date the mural was unveiled, which was also Sean's birthday, was May 9. In the interview, we incorrectly identify it as April 9. Okay, that's everything. Here's Patrick to tell the story Patrick Yurick 3:01 Sean came into High Tech High and I would say he was the ideal High Tech High student. He wanted to be there. I mean, I've never met a student who wanted to be at that school more than he did. He came in with lots of project ideas. He wanted to be a part of my after school program, graphic novel project, even though we weren't really recruiting freshmen that year because I had an overwhelming amount of 11/10, 11th and 12th graders in the program. And he just insisted he's like, I gotta be here. And he he came in wearing like a Green Lantern belt buckle, and was obsessed with comics, and he just had every question in the world for me about everything that I knew about the comic industry and everything else under the sun. And he and I just clicked really well and started having lunch together. And there was a point that year where I acknowledged I I kind of wished I was, like, more like him. When I was his age. I was more nervous and self absorbed, and he was, like, totally focused on learning and doing really cool things, and had a great sense of humor. And, yeah, yeah, was it the last day of school that he died? Yeah, there's like, Monday, Tuesday, and then Wednesday was the last day of school and he died. He was killed early in the morning of that Monday. Alec Patton 4:19 That's so awful. Patrick Yurick 4:20 Yeah. I mean, I remember the whole staff meeting, and without getting too much into it, it was like this thing where I kind of figured out by just how upset Ray and Lillian looked that a student had died. And when they started calling the teachers out, who are currently his teachers, I got called out last, and as soon as they called me out, I knew which student it was like by just process of elimination, it hit me like a brick that day. So it's pretty horrifying. The way he died was pretty horrifying, and just all the questions that you don't know how to answer at 28 years old, about. Anything, because that's how old I was, 29 when that happened, yeah. And then almost immediately, everybody goes their separate ways. Goes the end of the year, yeah, yeah, except myself and my current business partner, Luke and a couple of other students who ended up being Paul bears and his funeral A week later, and then we had, we just got into Comic Con as part of the after school project. So we weren't going off like we were one of the only groups of people still working in the school during the two weeks, because we had to get a comic out to bring it to Comic Con. So Alec Patton 5:37 wow, what was that like? Patrick Yurick 5:39 I mean, when it happened, I remember immediately saying to myself, I just want to leave, like, as I'm not from San Diego, I'm from New Hampshire, and all I want to do is go home to my parents, and I wanted to quit teaching. And I remember, like, because I left early the day it happened, and then I was supposed to have a half day with the students. And I reasoned to myself, they need me to be here because of how close I was to Sean and how much they were going to model their own processing after how I was demonstrating, if that makes sense. And like, yeah, of course, I stepped back in the class. I put all the kids in a circle, and throughout the day, we, you know, we did the grief counseling stuff, and at the end of the day, when it was just the G and P kit, the graphic novel project, kids, I said to them, we have every reason in the world to not go to Comic Con this year, even though we've been working for three years to get into this convention. But if this is too much for everybody, and I was like, it's too much for me, I'd prefer not to go. I was like, I want to go lick my wounds and just be sad for a while and not work on a project. And they all said to me, no, we've worked really hard to do this and get to this place, and Sean wouldn't want us to quit now. Alec Patton 6:55 Yeah, Patrick Yurick 6:55 That was the same day that Caitlin grits, who was born on the same day as Sean, and they've known each other since the womb, basically, from what I understand, she came and said, Hey, we need to make a mural for Sean. And I was like, Yeah, let's talk about that later. It's like, I can't think about that. But that's how it all started the project, yeah. So now take me to where the project picked up again. Well, we had to go to go to Comic Con, so it didn't start right away. It was also summer. Everybody, everybody normal, was out of school at that point. Yeah, yeah. And originally, Caitlin had an idea of doing, like a memorial mural that was going to be in the ninth grade wing that was just like Sean's face and like a Green Lantern symbol or something. And I was like, was I got a moral work on that that sounds not really my speed. And so we did Comic Con. And then in July, I took a week off because the other thing that was happening was because we decided to pursue this mural project, the first person I had to talk to was Shawn's mom, but obviously it was much harder time for her than anybody else, and I tried to go slow just broaching like I want to do this. Is this going to be well received? And talking to Lillian and Ray and the beginning of August, before school started, we assembled a design forum, basically, and we looked at everything about Sean. We looked at all the pictures we had of him. We looked at everything he was about. We made lists of what he cared about. And ultimately, we landed on a poem he did for his ninth grade class. The he finished it probably three weeks before he died, and we dissected that poem, and they all pitched ideas for how we could turn that into a mural, and then I decided to take my 3/9 grade classes. In my 11th grade class to design the six panels, I chose the spot where it was going to go on the front of the school, which also required me going to Larry Rosenstock at the time, because there, at that point, there had never been a mural on the front of a High Tech High School. So I had to get permission to put it where we ended up putting it. And there was just so much logistics involved. And I think, you know, looking back, like all the logistics were a way for my brain to be occupied, so I wasn't feeling all the things that I didn't want to feel at the time. Yeah, about the whole process. So, so all summer we planned, and then I got the project together, and that was what all of my classes worked on for the entire fall semester. And there was project leaders that had to come in and present to the staff, because it was really important to Lillian at the time that this wasn't just like my classes doing a project, that this was like about healing the school. And so we planned out a project that was going to culminate by January of that school year in all 600 people painting parts of the mural in the entire school voluntary, of course, like it was and nothing was forced. But we did have a sign up schedule, and students came in and but my students a. In my classes designed it. We project designs from our drawings onto the panels, which were all four by six panels. And yeah, it was a big design endeavor, honestly, like in a lot of coordination between different classes, because the design was one design, but it was being worked on by four different periods of my my class. So yeah, 100 students that fall. Alec Patton 10:23 How did the students respond to this? Because, like, I mean, I imagine some of them knew Sean. He'd been a ninth grader, so a lot of them wouldn't have but they also, I'm sure, I mean, it must have been horrifying for everybody. What was the feeling when you when you introduced it. Patrick Yurick 10:41 I mean, I was pretty surprised. I don't remember much from then. I was, like, in a fog, more more than I care to admit from that time. But like, what I remember was there was zero pushback, because that was a big concern of Lillian's. This is her first year being a director at the school, and I also want to set the table like projects aren't usually started on a precedent of something sad, right? Like we have a project launch, which is a normal part of PBL at High Tech High and the project launch is to get the kids excited about doing something, whereas this project, it was like this terrible thing happened. If anyone wants to opt out, I'll create a secondary curriculum, because I know this is really heavy, and I was like a lot of ninth graders, and one group of 11th graders, and none of the students really knew Sean, but I remember, like I pitched the whole thing, and no one batted an eye about doing it. Like, I mean, I think they all felt, I think it's really hard to hear news about this kind of a thing. And when you're a kid, there's an overwhelming sense of, I wish I could do something to help. And I was pretty surprised at how much that was a universal feeling amongst all the students. They understood the gravity of it, and they liked that I gave them a direction to place their empathy towards the situation, if that makes sense. Alec Patton 12:07 Yeah, absolutely. So then the hard part starts, because I mean you and I, I've seen many murals painted inside and outside schools, and they vary dramatically in quality. And it's one thing, if you're painting a mural about how awesome whatever your team mascot is, but you really don't want to mess this up, right? And so the obvious thing to do would be like, right? We're getting in a professional and they're going to design this mural, and everybody's going to be able to paint a little bit on it. And you didn't go that route. So let's get into the logistics. Like, so you said four classes worth of students, right? Patrick Yurick 12:51 Correct? Yeah, yeah. And I split the panel into because maybe, yeah, I don't remember exactly how I split the panels up, but basically, there was enough students who were working on it, and I formed them into different design groups to pitch ideas right like and I also created an audience where Sean's mother was coming in once in a while, and she had friends that were mirrorless, and they came in and did critiques on what the students were thinking of. Because the core design that was created by the graphic novel project during the summer was more like a suggestion of where to start. We always knew Sean was going to be in the first panel, and the idea generally was going to be that there was a wave of energy coming from him that was changing the world, which connected back to the poem that he wrote, which was about, I hope my life amounts to making change in the world. You know, like it was a thing he wrote in his poem. So, like, you know, there was just a lot of but each panel was also spaced apart. The original mural had the panels, two panels, grouped together in three different like triptychs, and then each of those murals were about two feet apart. And then the sections of two panels each, so there's three sections, the grouping of the two murals were about six feet apart. So when we designed it, we designed a wave coming from the first panel, and it all lined up. This is why we needed to use projectors, because that was the part I planned out. Was like, okay, so inside the wave is going to be the world transforming, and outside the wave is going to be the world that needs to be transformed. And originally, we had everything outside the wave being black and white and everything inside the wave being color to reinforce the idea of transformation. But what was in the panels was a heavy amount of debate amongst the students, and I really nurtured that debate, because I was like, this is a mural. Representing your school. So it's your hope for the future. It's not just and, you know, like, that's a lot to ask from a ninth grader who just started High Tech High to think about, like, what do you hope for the future? But it was also couched in a narrative of, like, Shawn was a ninth grader, and he did a poem where he kind of expressed his ideas for hopes for the future, and we're building on that. So I was like, I don't think it's too much to ask a kid to think from the standpoint of where they're at, what their hopes are, right? So, and I knew that that was kind of the conversation, that each piece was about this transformation and and then the checks and balances that was really important was so each they're in groups. They pitched. We came up with different parts of the design, and then they nominated group leaders that would meet during lunch to coordinate, like, well, this class is doing this thing, so we don't want our design to be too much like theirs, and that would be brought back to the class. So we had project managers that were meeting at lunch, and then the ultimate level of checks and balances was then, once a month during the entire process, the project managers were going to staff meetings during our morning professional development, and I would facilitate the staff doing critique, because the staff, I said to them like, this is Representing our school, and most of the staff didn't know Sean because he was a freshman, so only for like, four teachers and worked with him. So it was, like, important to Lily and and I that this wasn't just about Sean, but it was about representing, like, what our collective hopes are for the world that we're trying to create. Alec Patton 16:39 Yeah, what surprised you or or what struck you about that initial process of design? Patrick Yurick 16:48 I mean, a couple things that come to mind, like immediately, and I'm just smiling because, like, the first thing that came that came up was I was kind of like this, anti like, teaching. I was an art teacher, so it was very like, like, I just went through unconventional ways. I really subscribed at the time to, like, on the unlearning process and like what that meant, and like driving, like hitting challenges, but like, the students Alec Patton 17:16 say a little bit about what that means. Um, Patrick Yurick 17:19 it's just like I started with not taking into account, like teaching vocabulary, for instance, like art vocabulary, like, so I would say, Well, what are you noticing? Or what is it? Would all come from emerging insights that the students were have, were having when they were designing pieces of the mural. And then I was like, helping them, like, codify that, but they would create the codification of it. That's where I was at as a teacher, because in my third year teaching, I was and I was young, but one of the things that came up was, you know, I remember on one of the panels, the students kept drawing a beach and a sunset and the sun was huge, like, it was like, the size of the entire panel, but the people they were drawing were like, little tiny stick figures on the beach. And I was like, You guys get that, like, from our perspective, the sun is small, lower than the people, right? And it was the first time in my teaching that I realized, oh, I need to teach them perspective, like I needed to like we had to slow down and do lessons through the process on how to draw with a vanishing point on horizon line, because they decided that a horizon was something they wanted to artistically represent. I had to teach them how to draw a landscape, you know, and they weren't going to just learn that on their own, like they they needed a lesson crafted around perspective drawing. And I realized, oh, there is some merit to teaching traditional art vocabulary and techniques to students for the first time in my career. So that was one thing. Another thing that was, like, pretty surprising to me was, you know, for all going back to the way the students reacted to the project, they were, they loved. They every day was a discovery of a new art, thing that they were trying to learn and they're struggling with and they needed. They were like, I can't get this, right, you know Patrick, they call you know. Some call me Mr. Eric. Some call me Patrick. But like, like, what is like? They were frustrated, and they were asking for my help to guide them in their learning. And I it was a dream for as a teacher, when you have students that engage in a process, right, but then to the outside community, it was hard. It was, I think it was harder on the people the project was harder on the people that weren't a part of the project and a part of the process initially. Because, you know, that's a lot of the teachers were like, This is really sad, and I want the students to be excited about stuff when they come to school. And I. Was like, Well, my students are excited. I don't know what's going on, but the subject matter was so heavy that when you weren't dealing with it every second of every day, when I would bring it up at a staff meeting or talk about it with other teachers, it was like they were just starting to process I was in the middle of processing it every minute of every day, and when I would talk to people outside of it, so it was like they were just processing it for the first time in months, which was true, right? Because they weren't thinking about it, they were thinking about their classes. So I had to manage both the community's perspective on the project as a whole through a lot of vectors of people who you know, through high tech, high leadership, to the teacher teaching staff, when I was asking for their attention on things, to the students and the parents, because this is a heavy it was a heavy project, right? Like it's, yeah, it was just a that was really surprising. I'd never dealt with something on that scale, if that Alec Patton 21:00 makes sense. So you had all these cool ideas. You've got these different panels. How did you do the filtering process of No, this is what the panel's actually going to look like. Patrick Yurick 21:13 I mean, that was largely decided on by the students. I mean, the big thing is actually the first and the last panel were the easiest to design, because the first panel was going to have Sean, and that was like a third of or half of the panel was, like, already decided, and then what was happening in the background just needed to be decided. We ended up doing a mushroom cloud and a bomb and all this stuff on the last panel, we knew that the narrative had to end in the future, so we started researching, like, utopian idealism and trying to understand, like, what future cities would look like. So students did a lot for the last panel, I think that was my 11th grade class did that one, but the middle ones, it was like, Okay, well, what's happening in the middle four? And we ended up choosing, for better or worse, like different geographical areas of the world, and doing research on what was happening in those areas, and really trying to contemplate what changes would happen in those places to make them better. So, like the second panel was a woodland scene, and it was lush and growing in the color part. And then it was like burning down in, you know, I think we were talking a lot about the California wildfires at the time. And then, you know, the third panel was the only one that I feel a little bit weird about now all these years later, because it was, it was based around Africa, beautiful panel. But also I, yeah, it's neither here nor there, but I'd wish all of the panels had been rooted in San Diego. In retrospect. The third panel was a beach scene, or no, is the rain forest? And then the fourth panel was a beach scene. So San Diego beach, so, like, the second and fourth, fourth panel were very rooted in California geography, where the two middle ones are the only ones that were like, you know, dicey, sure, yeah, yeah, I understand so. But we did extensive research on all these designs. And again, the students pitched them. Before we even drafted anything. We pitched them. They brought the pitches to various audiences. They got feedback on the ideas, and said, make sure you include this. And you know, a lot of different considerations went into the what was in the color parts and what was in the black and white parts. Alec Patton 23:41 What were you most nervous about midway through the process? Patrick Yurick 23:45 Oh, I wasn't gonna get done. I mean, but I feel like that as a as an art teacher and as a project based learning teacher, I actually, I think, just as a project based learning teacher, I don't know anybody who tackles an ambitious, giant project, and it feels completely confident that it's gonna get finished, and even if it gets finished, it's gonna be any good. And I really thought, I really felt the weight of like, well, if the panels aren't designed well enough, and they're not beautiful enough, it's not gonna go on the front of the school. And then all sudden, I'm letting down four of my classes, as well as, like, Sean's family and like his classmates who were there was just a lot of pressure. Alec Patton 24:26 Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a burden. Yeah, was there a point where you started feeling like, like, letting yourself feel excited? Like, oh, I think Patrick Yurick 24:35 this is gonna I never felt excited about this project. I mean, the only parts I felt excited about was the abstract stuff. When the students were designing things in the middle of my usually in projects, I get most excited when I know the end is I could see the end, because I get over that hump of like, is the project going to be done, and how good is it going to be? And then I'm like, Oh, it is going to get done. And that's when I usually get excited. This was the first. Project in my career I'd ever worked on, where, when I got to that point, that's when the, you know, grief stuff started setting in. Like I knew when the project ended, I was facing a lot of emotions that I've been kind of avoiding, Alec Patton 25:15 yeah, because you wouldn't have the project Patrick Yurick 25:16 anymore, right? And it felt like losing Sean again. Alec Patton 25:20 Yeah, yeah. So tell me about the actual painting, the making the panels. Patrick Yurick 25:33 Well, we did this, so they designed it, and we worked on scale. So they had worksheets where, you know, they were kind of working through various parts, and then we blew them up to, like a quarter size, and then the groups worked on the designs. And then we took those, scanned them, projected them onto the primed panels we chose because down at Chula Vista, there's like a lot of sun in that part, and it's very dry and there's a lot of wind. So we chose billboard material to put the panels on so they could bend and kind of flex with the with the elements, and Ted Cuevas. And I primed them and cut them. And then the students, we had access to a couple of projectors, and we projected the designs onto the murals, trace them on and then in January, when we're getting ready for the entire school to work on them, I had volunteer students come in. We make pre mixed up like a ton of different colors of paint based on the design, because we had finished designs with cut that were all colored, that we proof the concepts with and then we mix them, we dabbed them, we numbered. It was a very paint by numbers experience when the entire school came in, because I knew, like, I couldn't ask everybody to, like, know how to paint, right? Like that. That was gonna intimidate everybody. But I could give everybody and be like, All right, you're assigned the number 37 this is the color. Go find 37 on these paint, you know, whatever. And then they painted those sections. Alec Patton 27:04 Yeah, those last weeks when you're actually painting, when you have the full school paint by numbers, you'd been worried all this time about, is this actually going to get done? How was it feeling in the home stretch? Was it? Patrick Yurick 27:18 Yeah, not great only because the paint by numbers didn't result in the painting looking that good, which you can expect when you have 600 people do a paint by numbers collaboratively on a 20 foot wide art installation. Sure. Luckily, you know, Lillian supported me to take some time off and work on painting parts of the mural. And then I worked with three other muralists to touch up the painting before it went onto the school. So some people's stuff got painted over, but I don't think anybody was, like upset about that, because of how good it looked at the end. And Chris and Michelle Riley are local artists in San Diego, and friends of Shawn's mom, and they, they took two of the panels. I painted three of them myself. I touched up three of them myself at the time. And then Shawn's cousin Alecia, who is studying to be an art teacher at the time, came in, and the next year, she ended up being my student teacher in my classroom, but she she worked on the one of the panels, Alec Patton 28:24 yeah, this does, this does sound like a young teacher's project, Patrick Yurick 28:28 yeah, yeah. It burned me out. I mean, I literally, I think I've never felt more burned out than I did at the end of that year. Like, for sure, like I needed to take time off. I ended up leaving teaching two years later. And looking back, I can largely see that like that was because I just did too much, like 100 hours a week, 8090, hours a week. I was getting into school at 5am leaving at nine or 10 at night. Wasn't healthy. Alec Patton 29:00 It was that, was that because of this project, or was there other stuff too well, that Patrick Yurick 29:05 project, post graphic novel project, plus, you know, when I was working on the mural, when we were touching up the paintings, my classes were still happening, so I had to come up with curriculum for my classes to do during The days that, you know, no one's covering my classes, so I, you know, I had to devise ways to work on it on the margins. For the last two months, it was finally unveiled on, I want to say I always get the date mixed up, but I think it's April 9, and that was Sean's birthday. Wow. And we had the school come out in waves, because not all the students could fit out on the front. We unveiled it, and Sean's cousin did a recital of his poem. Couple of Sean's friends talked, I talked. I. Yeah, it was a beautiful unveiling, and really sad, hard moment to be done with it. Yeah, during the project, there was a lot of like, I don't know, young version of me, just belief that finishing it would solve all the problems in the world, you know, and then the gut wrenching realization upon finishing that that's not how this works. You just move on to the next project. And I don't think I've ever been more pointedly aware of that, that the process is probably more important than the the end, because there is, there is no real end. And then when we got, you know, the mural was up, I left High Tech High Chula Vista a couple years after that, and I went and worked on a bunch of different things for High Tech High but it really dawned on me how much this was a ripple in a larger narrative of a community, and that was hard for me to take in, because it wasn't a ripple for me. It was like a corner of who I was. Like this was an irrevocable part of my entire journey as a human being, but to the high tech eye Chula Vista community, it reasonably made sense that it was going to be something that goes into the background of the narrative, because you have new students, you have new teachers, people who weren't there, people who did not go through the grief, through the process of creating this thing, through the just wasn't a Part of their narrative, right? So several years later, I was called by then Director, I believe is Tim McNamara, and he told me they were expanding the senior wing, which I don't know if you were remember this, but it was a much needed expansion. But it did mean the mural had to come down, because all of a sudden, that wall that it was on, which was on the front of the school where the senior wing was that wall was no longer going to be there, so it came down, and I brought it to Chris and Michelle's house. I didn't know what else to do. And time started passing. I was in the middle of I just My son was born at the time, and then I was starting my own business back then and scrambling for work, and I just didn't have time to, like, focus. And to be honest with you, I kind of, and I look back now, because it's been eight years since they came down, I didn't want to work on it. I really, like, I couldn't go through the process again. It was one of the hardest things to pick up a paintbrush and work on this mural again. After the entire experience I had the first time of working on it, it just brought back all those emotions. So it got delayed. Covid happened, you know, but I got called by Edrick during covid, and he was a director that I'd never met, and he'd become director of high tech, high Chula Vista. And Edrick called me, and he said the young man had showed up at the school during covid When the entire campus was shut down, and he was asking about the mural, and it turned out it was one of Shawn's classmates, and Edrick had heard about the mural, like a bunch, and heard kind of the stories from various staff members and but at that moment, he said, We need to get this back up. And he called me and said, What can I do to help you, you know? And I at that point, I was like, I mean, is it even important to this community anymore? I mean, so many people by that point, like 95% of staff that was there during the making of the mural was gone. The students were all turned different students, you know. So it was hard for me to envision, like, well, what right do I have to say what the front of the school looks like, you know, with the mural So, but when Edrick called me, you know, it pushed me. Took me another three years to finally get it done. Ted called me a year ago and said, It's time, Alec Patton 34:11 Ted Cuevas, yeah, Ted Cuevas, Patrick Yurick 34:12 he said, It's time. We gotta get this back up. Alec Patton 34:14 So would you? So what'd you do? How'd you, how'd you? Did you just, did you just get the paint brush out? And was it just like back when you were 28 just you making time Patrick Yurick 34:23 to I wish I could say that the reality was, as I set a deadline, we put a lot of effort into creating an unveiling process, and I waited till the last minute, worked really hard on it. Chris and Michelle had their stuff done years ago, years ago, and one of the biggest changes we had to do is we, we there used to be spaces between each one of the panels, so when we then now, when it's up, it's all one big mural, which meant the wave had to be corrected. And one of the other things, one of the other things that had to happen, which I knew was going to need to happen, because as soon as we. It up. I was like, the background can't be in black and white, because it was in such high contrast that when you looked at it, when you're driving into the campus, you only saw the black and white. You didn't see the color stuff, because right and White was in higher contrast than the color stuff. So we we did gray scale to everything that was in the black and white sections, added new elements, remastered some of the painting so that, you know, when it was all scrunched together, it looked good. Took quite a while, but I only worked on the first panel. Chris and Michelle deserve all the credit for remastering panels two through six. Alec Patton 35:36 Wow, that's a process. Patrick Yurick 35:40 Yeah, yeah, and we unveiled it. It was pretty trippy, because, like, we did it at the August 29 down at Chula Vista. Ted came down. Kay flewelling came down. She was his humanities teacher. Ted was his math science teacher. Ted was the only remaining teacher that was still on campus. And we spoke to the assembled student body in front of the school, and tried to convey, from our standpoint, like, why it was important. And I made a speech, and as Sean's family all showed up, and I think it went well. I mean, I'm really proud of the mural, the students were really quiet and we're really paying attention to everything that was being said. And it was hard because I didn't know, you know, when we were doing speech, how much did they know? How much do I reveal to them? You know, his family really trusted me to kind of set the tone for how we were explaining what had happened. Alec Patton 36:37 And now it's back up. I've seen it with my own eyes. It looks It looks beautiful. Patrick Yurick 36:41 Thank you. Thank you. I agree with you. You know, my son's middle name is Sean, and for the last six years, seven years since he was born, Sean has been on a panel in my house where he could see it. When he was really little, he would, you know, say good night to Sean. Like Sean became a person in his life. And sorry makes me sad, but I forgot that. You know, when we went to go hang it up, Calvin came back from his mother's house, and he was very upset, because he was like, where's Sean? It was the first time in his life that Sean was gone. And so it was a really special thing to take him down to the school and let him, you know, say goodbye, see the full he'd never seen the full mural. You know, my kid had never seen it. And it was very powerful, very powerful. And, you know, we plan on going every once in a while to say hi to Sean, and Sean was one of the funniest kids I've ever met in my life. And I've never laughed harder with a student than I have with him. And, you know, I think the way this whole narrative kind of went fits who he was on so many levels. He never wanted to be that the center of the story like and that's why he's not. It's not a giant mural of Sean's life. It's a mural of the narrative of high tech, high you know, of project based learning and about the hopes for the future that we all have, that we don't have any guarantee of seeing. What do you mean by that? One of the biggest, poignant things that happened, I think, as a byproduct of Sean dying at 15, was me realizing that the time we have with the students and the time we are the work we're doing, it's not for college, it's not for later. It's as much, if not more, important to realize it's it's how you're choosing to spend your life right now, and without a guarantee that you're even going to be here tomorrow, we can still have hope for the future, but we really have to be present, you know? And that was a hard lesson to learn, because up until that point, my career, I was very focused on, you know, how's this project going to lend itself to my portfolio, and how is it going to help the kids get into a better college, or something like that? Sean didn't get to live past 15 years old. He turned 15 the week before he died, so, yeah, just important, and I don't think he would have ever felt good about being the center of attention, but I think he would have liked the idea that as a byproduct of his death, because the way Sean died was so horrific. I don't know if you want to edit this out or not, but like he was killed by his dad as a murder suicide. And I remember just being so upset at the way he died, because I knew that was going to define how people remembered him, you know, like, and that felt like the biggest injustice in the entire world to me, because he was so much more than the way he died. And. Just the mural, in a lot of ways, was like forging a new narrative, yeah, and I think we kind of did that, you know, in the ways that matter, right? You know, it's still being the story of who he was is now being shared because there's this 20 foot the front of a school talking about his ideas and not about how he died. Alec Patton 40:28 Yeah, that's, I mean, that's probably a perfect spot to end it. But is there anything you want to add? Patrick Yurick 40:39 Um, I think the only thing that's been really rewarding I you know, there's a lot of trauma bonding that happened with my students, as you know, from having worked with 100 hands Learning Lab for several years. Like, you know, I am pretty attached to some of my former students, but a lot of that came because of this, and it's been one of the biggest rewards in my life to have seen them grow and be affected by this and process this at the different levels of their development that they've gone through, because at the time, none of the students could talk about it. It was too big. It was too horrific for them to like, reflect on and and process. And now I've, I've had a lot of conversations with them where, you know, they're adults now, they're in their 30s, and we can talk about that thing we went through, you know, in a way that makes us feel like, you know, we did our best to handle it. Yeah. Alec Patton 41:47 Yeah, yeah, Patrick, thank you so much for taking the time to share share this project. Patrick Yurick 41:54 Yeah, thank you. I'm really happy to get the idea of the project out there is a definitely some internal debate on like, is this publicizing something that you know is best? But I think the whole idea behind the project that he even had in the beginning was like, No, we need to shout from the rooftops how important this kid was. And I really appreciate you allowing us to be a part of your platform to like share that out. Because, you know, I think there's a lot of people are gonna see it down at school, but I don't think the story has been told of the mural quite this way. Alec Patton 42:36 Glad to be able to help get it out there. Patrick Yurick 42:38 Yeah, thanks, man. Alec Patton 42:39 Thanks a lot. High Tech High Unboxed is hosted by me, Alec Patton. Our theme music is by brother Herschel. Huge. Thanks to Patrick hurrick for this conversation. We have a link to Sean reading the poem that inspired the mural in the show notes. We also have links to more information about the project, and, of course, a link to a photo of the mural itself, and we have PBL resources you can use to design your own project, whether you're a PBL teacher already or this is just something you're interested in trying out. Thanks for listening. You.