After 11 years of teaching in the secondary ed English classroom, I found myself at a roadblock in trying to figure out how to effectively teach during this season. However, I soon found out that authentic teaching never fails. Whenever you give your students relevant and authentic opportunities to create and to learn, you will see great impact. I wasn’t as confident about that as we approached the 2020/2021 school year with the hybrid and all digital classes. I felt the same with my face-to-face class too because of the pandemic protocol, but there was a component that brought about an effective year for us.
I’ve always loved teaching ELA because the possibilities are endless when it comes to what other subjects we can incorporate in the classroom. ELA has always served as the backbone of education with its strong hand in literacy and voice. Unfortunately, worldwide, we have seen fairly low percentages in student proficiency in reading and writing. I often refer to middle schools and high schools as the 3rd and anchor leg of the education journey or race. Whatever ‘batons’ were dropped with the 1st and 2ng leg ‘runners’, we have to figure out a way to go back and grab the batons and help our students finish the race. It’s a tough job. I know that not all educators have the same experiences, but the incorporation of this component in the ELA classroom will help all students.
This element is a very foundational yet authentic way to learn, but it has been written out of some ELA curriculum. It has been forgotten. As we’re headed towards the new school year, I want to encourage you to add this to your bowl of Classroom Teaching Gumbo. The Classroom Teaching Gumbo is just another way to say Teacher Toolbox. I just like the idea of talking about ingredients. Every educator has their own way of making ‘gumbo’- of creating their classroom experience. This is just a simple ‘ingredient’ to think about as I have used it in ELA general education courses, ELA honors courses, adult ESOL courses, community courses and juvenile detention center ELA courses. And I can’t explain the wonders it did for my students and the Classroom Experience.
The Beauty of Art in the Classroom
There are a few ways you can use Art in the classroom, concerning learning THROUGH Art. One way you can use it is by placing a Google image of a piece of art on the Smartboard or projector and have the students write about the first thoughts that come to mind when they see it. They can write about the meaning of the image. I do this quite often during journal time for the first 3-5 minutes of class. It is a timed assignment, but it really helps them get into the mode of ‘thinking’. It can be an image used to introduce a topic or continue a topic.Another way you can use Art in the classroom is through an Art Gallery Walk. I have a Creative Writing assignment I do towards the beginning of the year, and this is when I do the Art Gallery Walk for the first time in the classroom. For the digital students, I had to upload pictures, but throughout the years and with the face-to-face students, they were able to look at the actual paintings. I connected with our school Art teacher, and she let me borrow about 7 paintings to bring into my classroom. I placed them around the room to give my students a ‘museum’ type experience, and they walked around to look at the pieces. They had to write a response to the painting. They wrote about their perceived meaning and even gave it a new title. At first, some of the students found it hard to ‘think’ about a piece of art. There were no words there to TELL them what to think. It was so abstract, but it tugged at their brain. It wasn’t long before my students who disliked writing started to look forward to those exercises. We would later use those paintings to connect with texts that we read in the classroom. I remember that my friend gave me an old picture she found in her garage. It was a picture of an old man in a rocking chair. I brought it in as one of the paintings. Later in the weeks, some of the students connected that painting with a poem we were reading entitled, “The Ex-Basketball Player” by John Updike. It was a great learning moment.
In the ELA class, students can also create stories from paintings. They can connect significant quotes to paintings as well. During this past school year, while there were some challenges with absenteeism, these were the assignments that I found most of my students to be fully engaged. These assignments were great primers for what was to come in the curriculum.
Throughout the year, we move to a more ‘structured’ way of looking and analyzing the paintings by using the OPTIC chart.
This is a pretty thorough process of analyzing the painting. Again the connections that the students can make with poems and speeches and quotes and music lyrics and stories are endless after dissecting Art in the ELA classroom.
On the other side of this, students can also display what they’ve learned from ELA content creating Art. I’m going to be honest. Over the past 2 or 3 years, I haven’t come across as many student artists like I used to. I actually talk about this more in my latest book entitled The TV Broke My Paintbrush: A Book for Educators, Parents and Youth Advocates.
The concept of the book is really about how the overload of entertainment has diminished the value of creating and thinking and exploring in the eyes of some of our youth. Through analogies and research, I share some insight and ideas for educators on how to tackle this in the classroom. Using Art in the ELA classroom would definitely be a major help in igniting that innate ability all students have to create and think. There are many factors to consider with this issue, but sometimes it’s just about giving students the opportunity to use Art in this way, whether it be stick figures or not. In the beginning, the students may be hesitant because they feel that they can’t draw or paint well. However, that’s the beauty of Art. It’s really not about perfection. It’s about the students being able to creatively display what they’ve learned through drawing or painting. It’s a reversal of the Art Gallery Walk. Now they can take excerpts or quotes and create from there.
I will never forget this story. About 6 years ago, I had a student in my 5th period class. He was considered the class clown. He was very funny, and it was great to have him in class. We did have a slight issue. He wouldn’t really complete classroom assignments. I would notice that he would start getting into his jokes after I gave instructions. I had a conversation with him after class one day. He admitted that he couldn’t do some of the assignments. He talked about how he was often compared to his older brother who took AP classes. He just felt that he wasn’t smart, but he believed that his humor was all he had. His mother eventually placed him into another school to make up his credits. About three weeks before he left, we were well into another round of the Art Gallery assignment. And he did the assignment. I watched him. And when it was time for the students to discuss their observations, he listened. Then he raised his hand. A couple of his classmates started to laugh because they were expecting him to say something funny, but he didn’t. He gave a very profound and unique response to the chosen painting. I certainly celebrated his willingness to put a voice to his thinking, and he spoke again and again. I may never know, but I believed the activity showed him that he does have the ability to think. This is what education is all about so I just want to encourage my fellow educators to think about these ideas for your classroom, even for the first day of school. Weave Art into your curriculum, and watch your students create ART, whether it’s by the pencil or the marker.
