Ashley Torres, left, and Yaileen Rivera, right, both ninth graders at Feinstein High School, in Providence, communicate using only gestures and facial expressions during yesterday’s Day of Silence at the school.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

PROVIDENCE — More than 130 teenagers piled into a high school library on a summer-like Friday afternoon and the only noise you heard was a sneeze.

Ten minutes later, Kate Lorch, an English teacher, told the crowd that they could “break the silence,” and the room erupted in cheers, whistles and high-fives. A couple of teenagers climbed on a table and started dancing.

“I know this was hard,” Lorch told them. “It’s been a long day. But I’m so proud of you. This is about creating change in our schools. Fifty-eight thousand slurs. You hear them all the time. Today, we decreased that number. Think about what we can do to make that number smaller.”

At Feinstein High School yesterday, more than a third of the student body, 130 pupils, learned what it was like to remain silent when every bone in your body wants to speak out. That’s what every day can feel like when you’re gay and you hear homophobic slurs tossed around the hallway, the bus stop and the streets.

The National Day of Silence is held every year to call attention to anti-gay and lesbian harassment. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of students took an oath of silence for all or part of the day, and at least 29 public and private high schools participated in Rhode Island. This year’s event honored Lawrence King, a 15-year-old California student who was shot and killed in February by a classmate because of King’s sexual orientation.

At Feinstein, students and a smattering of teachers wore gray T-shirts that said, “Silence is the most powerful scream” and “58,000 — the number of homophobic slurs you’ll hear by the time you graduate from high school.”

The Day of Silence challenged students to think about their own behavior. When a classmate uses an anti-gay slur, do you speak out and run the risk of being ridiculed or harassed or do you remain silent?

Yesterday, students seemed moved by the experience, none more so than Charvy Doung, a 16-year-old transsexual who said that the sea of gray T-shirts made him realize how much support he has among his classmates.

“People need to know what we feel every day,” Doung said. “Some teenagers are scared. Some are hiding. I feel safe in this school.”

Andrew Dellorffano, a sophomore, said the Day of Silence drove home his belief that it “doesn’t matter what’s on the outside; it’s what’s inside that counts.”

Holding in all those words, all those feelings, made Vanisha Joseph feel like she was about to burst: “I really like to talk and I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath, like I was going crazy.”

“I told my friend that the Day of Silence is a metaphor,” said freshman Jeffrey Boyer. “If you have been silenced, it’s because you are afraid to speak out. Knowledge is power. The more you know about your surroundings, the less you want to do bad.” Keeping silent was as challenging for teachers as it was for students. Todd MacMasters, a social studies teacher, called it an amazing day and said it forced him to rethink the way he teaches: “Maybe as a teacher I talk too much.”

Lorch, the English teacher who organized the event, said she realized how much she uses her voice to control — and inspire — the classroom, adding that her classes seemed listless yesterday.

She recalled one telling incident. When a bee flew into the classroom, the four boys who hadn’t taken the vow of silence dashed around the room, trying to catch the bee, but the rest of her students remained seated and focused on their work.

Lorch, the coordinator of the Gay-Straight Alliance at Feinstein, broke into tears when a teacher handed her a bouquet of pink roses to thank her for organizing the event. She said she was struck by how peaceful the hallways felt yesterday, as if the tempo shifted down a few gears into something less frantic.

As the final bell rang, the students drifted outside and most of them were wearing their T-shirts.

“I don’t remember much about high school,” Lorch said. “But this is a day I hope everyone will remember.”

lborg@projo.com