Collaboration in the classroom
Teachers and longtime friends team up to join art and poetry in two different schools Vernon For more than 30 years Jeanne Lee Moran and Carol Martyniuk have been colleagues, parents in the play group, Bible study attendees and friends. Recently, they have been collaborators with their respective students on the Great Interpretations Art Project, which was on display at the Sussex County Arts and Heritage Council’s Gallery in Newton from Dec. 12 to Jan. 10. In this project, Lee Moran’s sixth-grade art students from the Montague Elementary School and Martyniuk’s eighth-grade writing students from the Sussex Middle School worked together to create the paintings and poems that were exhibited. The opening of the show coincided with Emily Dickinson’s 179th birthday and her poems were the springboard for the student artists and writers. Last summer, Martyniuk was selected to attend the week-long Landmarks of American History and Culture workshop for teachers sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Its focus was: Emily Dickinson: Person, Poetry, and Place and the workshop was held at Amherst College and the Dickinson Homestead in Amherst, Mass. There she was inspired to do more with Dickinson’s poetry in her language arts classes. An aha moment When Linda Hirsch, artistic director of the Sussex County Arts and Heritage Council approached the two teachers in August with the idea of an interpretive collaboration, they happily seized the opportunity to work together again. Moran, who regularly exhibits at the gallery, had been looking for new ways for her art students to reach beyond the classroom. Having them illustrate original poetry by Martyniuk’s students was the perfect venue. In addition to the exhibit at the gallery, the students’ work is now on display on the Web site thanks to the efforts of Dorothy Caufield, technology teacher at Sussex Middle School. On this site, the paintings of the Montague Elementary School students can be viewed while the poets’ voices are heard reciting their corresponding work. Through this interdisciplinary project the students learned how the visual arts, poetry and technology can combine creatively.
See for yourself
Check out the student work at http://voicethread.com/share/786241.
The Great Interpretations Art Project will be on display on voicethread through the end of the school year.
Visit the student-designed wiki pages at http://greatinterpretations.wikispaces.com.
Educators can visit: http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers.