Sorensen Magnet
School for the Arts and Humanities
I
have had ties to my neighborhood elementary school for four years
now, and I really love it. Brief story: the school was facing being
closed around five years ago due to various adversities. I live in a
pretty nice little town that features a resort, beautiful lake,
vibrant downtown, all surrounded by mountains. The parents,
teachers, and downtown businesses wanted the school to stay open, and
somewhere in there a brilliant plan was formed: create the area's
first magnet school, focused on the arts and humanities. The school
is about five years into it, and now had a huge waiting list,
fantastic academic success, and an amazing community spirit. The
teachers and staff are spectacular, the kids are engaged, and the
parents are highly involved. The parents organize an elaborate,
enjoyable silent/live auction fundraiser each year to pay for the
high cost of the arts and humanities program, which gives the kids
focused education and exposure to an impressive assortment of
opportunities. To name a few: juggling, marimbas, african drums,
theater/improv, strings, pottery, technology, vocal music, chess,
world culture and sports, and of course, visual arts. Throughout the
year the school brings in artists-in-residence to work with the
students.
Last year I was invited for a residency, and it was a
great experience. Before the residency, I spent a day on Tubbs Hill
with the 2nd
and 3rd
grade classes. We set up four stations on the hill for a full-day
educational trip covering conservation, native plants, native
animals, and nature drawing. I taught drawing to all four classes,
and had a great time. The next week, I worked with twelve 2nd
and 3rd
grade students, guiding them through creating paintings of three
scenes from Tubbs Hill. I took the completed paintings and designed
them into a poster, shown below. I also worked with all the
kindergarten and first graders, and they each came away with a
finished painting of Tubbs Hill. It was a lot of fun, and there are
plans in the works for me to teach an after school fine arts program
next year, which I am really looking forward to. While I'm at it,
here's an extra plug for a great school. They created a video a
couple months ago that feature some of the performance teams. Yeah,
I'll admit it, my kids are lucky enough to go here too, and they
perform in this video.
Interior School
After
my experience in the Badlands, I now feel ties to two other pretty
great schools. At Interior School I had the privilege of working
with all the classes. The kids were great, and the community
environment, being such a small school, was wonderful. I have a
fondness for smaller schools. I already posted blog entries about my
experiences at Interior, but here is the poster I designed featuring
the kids' paintings. It will be displayed in the visitor's center at
Badlands National Park along with some of the students' paintings and
one of my own. While I was in Badlands, I also got to tag along on a
hike with the 6-8th
grade class. Here are some of the photos the kids took along the
way, as well as a group shot that I'm in.
Calhoun School
I wrote previously
about my experiences with the students and staff I met from this
school in Manhattan. It was a treat to meet them and spend the first
week of my residency in their company. I would have really enjoyed
having more time together, but from what I saw and heard, this seems
to be yet another wonderful school. They created a facebook page
around their Badlands experience, which is filled with great
photographs and tidbits. I highly recommend a look through. One of
the teachers, Gary, is a former Badlands artist-in-residence. There
is a link on this site to a video that features the Calhoun kids,
other local kids, and the superintendent for Badlands. I got to
watch the filming of this video, take after take. The video was used
as a promotion by the NPS for National Park week in April.
And
a few photos of the group, some including myself, are on Badlands'
flikr site: