Kindergarten students were given beautiful pre-cut shapes and asked to combine them to create familiar things. This was also partly scissor practice and addressed the proper use of glue.
Composition was also addressed. Children were asked to think of ways they could use the whole paper to express themselves, instead of just one part of the paper.
Never thought I would open up such a huge can of worms when I asked kids to work in teams of 7-8 to create a quilt. I immediately decided then to use the opportunity to have discussions with the children about group dynamics and as a group try to address some of the struggles they were facing. Surprisingly, these struggles are very similar to struggles we face as grown ups when we work as part of a team. Overall, we are working through the kinks and 2nd grade is such a great year to talk to kids about fairness, equality and friendships.....we are having a blast.
4th graders were working like busy ants printing out as many prints as they could. Each time they used a new color combination, their eyes would light up once they peeled off that stamp to see the results.
March 6, 2012 by twalker
By Teal Ruland
Study after study has shown that arts education is a powerful and important component of adolescent learning. Dance, drama, music, and visual arts provide outlets for creativity, instill discipline, and help us to understand and analyze the world around us.
Research also shows that the academic gains students achieve with high arts participation are greatest for struggling, low-income students at the most risk of academic failure. A decade-long study of after-school programs for low-income youth found that arts programs attracted higher-risk students than sports and had far greater academic and developmental benefits.
What’s more, arts programs in the school also provide opportunities to engage parents in their students’ work in ways that traditional academics might not.
Tom Hall, an English and theater arts teacher at Howenstine High Magnet School in Tucson, Arizona — an intensive support site of NEA’s Priority Schools Campaign — knows the importance that theater arts can have in a high school setting. He’s also well cast as a high school drama teacher – he’s played a featured role in the western “Posse” and had parts in the TV series “Legend” and “The Magnificent 7? for CBS. He’s also a member of the Screen Actors Guild for work he’s done in westerns on the silver screen.
The Priority Schools Campaign (PSC) caught up with Hall to talk about the importance of arts education and how his program helps brings families into the high school.
PSC: First, can you talk about why a theater arts department so important at the high school level?
Hall: Well, it’s important not only at the high school level, but at every level. But in high school especially, it gives the kids an outlet for their energy. It allows them to be creative and dress up and be other people. We started the drama class last year, hoping we could put together maybe one show, and we ended up doing three shows. When we do public performances, the students have the opportunity to perform for friends and family, as well as each other.
It’s also important because it brings people into the school. Those of us involved in the Priority Schools Campaign know that research shows parent, family, and community involvement in education raises achievement and helps us improve our schools.
PSC: How did theater become a passion of yours?
Hall: I’d left a teaching job in South Carolina to work in mining and geothermal engineering in Tucson. Bored and looking for a way to fill the off hours, I started performing in community theater throughout Tucson. In 1989, when the mining and engineering fields bottomed out, I returned to teaching as a reading tutor for special needs kids. I incorporated lots of characters and funny voices in reading with kids and soon found myself setting up drama programs at local middle schools. In the meantime, I started my work in television and commercial westerns, especially when they needed big guys to play lumberjacks or desperadoes. Years later, I still take parts in local productions, my wife and I are regular members of our church’s reader’s theater, but now I am asked more to direct and adapt scripts for groups and schools, especially at Howenstine where I teach full time.
Below are the 8 habits of mind I use in my art studio. As an art teacher and a teacher of 15 years I deeply believe that the arts help prepare our children for 21st Century learning, thinking and work-related skills. It's one thing to teach a child concepts, vocabulary, and historical facts, but it's quite another form of learning to teach a child to think, work with their mistakes, persist, envision, express, observe, reflect, explore and understand. In teaching with the habits of mind as the 'umbrella' that guides all lessons and units we ensure that children will always embrace all situations with these helpful habits of thinking. In the art room, I don't teach the kids to be 'artists', I teach them to be independent thinkers and explorers of answers by following their own questions.
I have often been asked why I don't have kids make Picasso-like work, or Matisse-like work. While we still look at these artists and their work, we rarely waste time trying to merely emulate them or their style. In emulating another artist's work we dispossess the children of their own innovative abilities to find their own unique style. Instead, we discover what inspired these artists to do what they did and similarly look for our own inspirations in our own lives. In following our own inspirations we place value in our own ideas, our own stories, our own unique capabilities. When all else in school is simply telling kids what they should know, in the art studio kids learn to value their own voice and to verbalize, through art, their own expression of this world. The idea that you can only be exceptional at what you love is huge in the art studio. To simply create a Picasso-like face, we might make a pretty picture to take home, but kids will never walk away truly feeling like creators or innovators of their own ideas or concepts.
The arts, in fact, give children an enormous advantage in the future, when they hit the job market. Children who can follow these habits of mind (see below) can take everyday obstacles, in any field, and turn them into opportunities. When I hear people downplay the importance of my role as an art teacher in education, I immediately know they've never had a hands-on studio art experience. When I hear about art and music being cut from budgets to only be replaced with more seemingly academically-focused courses, I am saddened for those children, for they will only be further crippled by this lack of arts education in their lives. I am not creating artists, I am teaching an essential 'language' of seeing, creating and expressing that will undoubtedly enhance all forms of human interactions. Art is a life-changing experience.....and no education should be without it....
Studio Thinking Framework | |
Develop Craft | |
Engage & Persist | |
Envision | |
Express | |
Observe | |
Reflect | |
Stretch & Explore | |
Understand Art World | |
Students in Mrs. Mathur's class got to detail their clay sculptures today using clay tools. Before we placed our clay bodies into a position, we had a discussion about how the way we hold our bodies communicates meaning. Next week, they will use permanent acrylic to paint their sculptures. During our discussion I showed them a slideshow of various sculptures of people that strongly show some sort of emotion. Children were amazing in their insight in to what emotions these sculptures were trying to communicate.
Below is an image of the unpainted, semi-finished textured tree on canvas that will be painted for the auction project. So far about 1/2 the school has added either a root or a twig to the tree. Every person that has added an element to the painting has also signed the back....(see image below). When all children, teacher and staff from Murch has added their part I will take the canvas home and paint it. You are welcome to come in the studio and get a glimpse of the work in progress. Just let us know you're coming.
