This week I have still been contemplating this idea of telling stories; telling imaginary stories, telling stories to inspire students, sharing your own stories with students, and allowing students to express their stories through artwork.
After teaching at Polaris last Friday, I was inspired by several students' engagement in our art project and the ideas they had generated in their sketchbooks for our Story of a Star paper mache sculptures. In a group discussion, each student shared their ideas about what story they wanted to tell and how they were going to tell their story with art materials. One student created a sketch to depict a picnic scene, where important people in her life were gathering to spend time together. She had already thought about using scrap fabric as the picnic blanket and how to incorporate drawings.
During our paper mache demo, another student made an interesting comment while she was practicing dipping and adding strips of newspaper on the balloon. After observing the newspaper strip in her hands, she suggested, "what if each one of us found a newspaper article that was really important to us or means something special to us and then we each got to add it to this balloon. Then it would be a combination of all of us." I was really inspired by her idea, since she was trying to relate to the material and was also thinking about the class as a collaborative community.
Maya gave me a great idea for possible lessons in the future that could relate to social justice issues or current events affecting students. Perhaps, students could create sculptures based on or inspired by news articles they find relevant or impactful in their lives. This type of project would probably be geared more towards the high school level, but could also be adjusted for lower levels.
Searching through newspapers, I found an article in the Collegian titled "Mental Health/ suicide.. " that reminded me of the #socialjustice lesson plan we wrote as a group in Art Ed Studio. The topic of mental health has also come up during my practicum at Poudre High School several times this semester. One of the students in the pottery I class has been absent most of the semester so far because he has been dealing with personal experiences related to mental health. As a reflection of this article and the impact this topic has on high school students in particular, I created a collage-drawing using the article I found in the newspaper.
