Most art projects are personal expressions by individual artists. But as an art teacher, it’s hard to beat a well-structured group project for helping students overcome differences and discover the power of creative teamwork.
The key to a good experience is organizing and managing the groups, so all know what to do. It’s not easy to do and takes a bit of time, but three colleagues at my urban high school were true masters at building creative teams.
Roland, my department head, used mural painting as a way to turn a class of reluctant students, who often were from rival neighborhoods or ethnic groups, into a (mostly) harmonious team.
Students develop problem-solving skills on the fly. The first problem the students had to solve was what to paint. Roland took advantage of art tables that seated four and turned each table group into a team. To make it work, he first had to walk the class through the process until he was sure each team member understood how to do their job.
The group’s scribe took notes on discussions, the timekeeper and moderator both made sure everyone had an equal chance to give opinions in the group’s discussions and the spokesperson shared the group’s conclusions with the rest of the class when it was time for groups to report. The students repeated this structure several times over two class periods to discuss and develop ideas for theme and subject matter, until they reached a class consensus.
Once a subject image was decided upon, it was divided with a 1-inch grid. Each student painted the shapes and colors for one square of the grid enlarged to fit a 6- or 10-inch square of cardboard. Group representatives circulated among the tables as students drew and painted, making sure colors matched and lines on adjacent squares lined up with each other.
By the time the class assembled their squares, like a giant puzzle on a framework Roland constructed, they had “bonded” as a class. Everyone was proud of the showpiece they’d made for Open House.
For several years my friend Jo, who taught language arts, collaborated with Daniel, who taught American history. Each year she had two classes of 11th-graders whose schedules aligned with Daniel’s classes.
Jo and Daniel decided to co-create a project on storytelling, which was culturally important for both Native American and immigrant European groups in the 19th century. Students used some of their time in both classes to work in 3- or 4-person groups.
Each student group chose a different ethnic group or community, and studied their legends and folktales. In Daniel’s class, they emphasized cultural viewpoints shown in the stories, while the main focus in Jo’s class was story structure and development. At a popular end-of-project celebration, the groups gave oral presentations of their stories to the combined classes and any parents who could come.
In each of these cases, master teachers combined a creative project with a well-managed group structure to help their students ignite curiosity and deepen their learning experience in powerful, positive ways.
Gephardt teaches private art classes in Kansas.
Links:
[1] http://www.tolerance.org/author/jan-s-gephardt