As a bus driver who surrounds herself with students every morning and every afternoon, Kelly Hay knows a thing or two about the way young people gather.
On a morning when she was parked in the bus drop-off outside of her school, Kelly noticed her daughter walking to a different spot than where she usually goes. A large group of students was headed in the same direction, and they started to form a circle.
“First thought? ‘Oh no…there’s going to be a fight!’” Kelly wrote on Facebook.
She watched from her bus as the circle of students grew around the flag pole
Facebook
“Then, it happened. They started praying. They were quietly holding hands, and praying. There were tears in my eyes. These young people dropped everything, put aside their differences, and prayed for the staff, their school, and our country. There was no show boating, no goofing around. They gathered quietly, and did what they set out to do.”
See You At The Pole (SYATP) movement is a global day of student prayer that first took shape with 10 students in 1990. Every year since then, the initiative has grown to millions of students joining together in prayer on their campuses on the fourth Wednesday in September.
According to the organization’s website, the goal of the international prayer rally is for students to meet at the flagpole before school and lift up their friends, families, school, staff and nation to God. The movement is student-initiated, student-run and student-led.
Kelly had to leave before the prayer was over, but not before she snapped some pictures in awe of the unity her students had displayed.