Once they’d thought about that, students decorated actual shoes with their ideas about what’s important and then put them on display in an outdoor labyrinth.

Environmental artist Bryant Holsenbeck of Durham led the project. “They’re really transforming the shoe to make it a work of art,” she said. “It’s the energy they bring to it that’s really interesting.”

Teachers collected old shoes, or students could use their own, and students used marker pens, paints and other materials to illustrate messages. The project was not limit ed to art classes either. Tenth-grade English students, for example, were asked to find a quote to put on their shoe.

Ryan Roberts used his own battered leather boot to convey a concern dear to his heart — the loss of the farming way of life. “Too many houses, not enough farmers” he painted on the side of the boot.

His family farms, but Roberts said he has watched as neighbors have sold off their lands for subdivisions. “It’s something I enjoy, and I wish my kids could get in it and enjoy it,” he said of farming. “I’m going to try to keep our land as long as I can.”

Peggy Elliott said she asked her classes in parenting and child development to design a shoe based on what they wanted their kids to know about the world.

Angie Chavez said she cares about the environment, and her shoe read “Feed the Earth” across the toes. “Our teachers are teaching us to save the Earth,” Chavez said.

Senior Joe Lawson, a student in Advanced Placement art, took black high-top canvas sneakers and assigned them political parties, with corresponding red and blue trim. The right one had an elephant fashioned from duct tape on one side and read “Bipartisan,” while the left high-top had a donkey and said “Paralysis” across the toes.

“Our theme we had to go by was something people should be tolerant of,” Lawson said. “I’m a centrist.”

Lawson said he sees partisanship hurting relationships in his own family as otherwise loving people turn testy in political discussions.

“Politics is becoming a sport,” he said.

Lawson will be 18 in April, and he is looking forward to his first election. “I would probably wear them to go vote, but they’re too small,” he said of the high-tops.