Community Art Projects

Chapters 9 & 11 of Art Education for Social Justice highlighted several important considerations to guide the experiences we set up for our students. These include intergenerational mentorship, dismantling stereotypes, and achieving empathy through first-hand encounters.

While it holds true that "youth seldom interact with individuals (other than their teachers) who come from other generations", it had not struck a chord with me until now. The reality is that children spend the majority of their days with a specific few mentors. The variety and breadth of knowledge we gain when sharing dialogue with those of other generations has gotten lost somewhere in our routine, day-to-day lives. We should embrace intergenerational learning opportunities to enrich the lives of all those involved! Every one gains a new perspective into the life of someone else. This has the potential to snowball into an appreciation for diverse peoples, empathy for those facing adversity, and active justice-seeking/ advocating for the oppressed. The world could be a better place if we all learned the valuable lessons others around us have to teach and grew to appreciate mutually each other as valuable members of society.

The reflections the students and others involved in the community mosaic and school garden gave provided insight on the effect these activities had on their perspectives of others. The participants' biases and presumptions about the populations they would be working with were challenged as they worked side by side and learned from one another. The college students in chapter 11 found it surprising to have learned so much about the wetlands from a retired woman in her 80s, and with so much enthusiasm! The gentleman who knew concrete was shocked by how easy and fun it was to work with young kids. Even assumptions people had against themselves were revealed, such as in chapter 9 when one of the clients of the center couldn't believe what they were able to accomplish on the mosaic. Some were surprised because they anticipated the collaboration would be simple and easy. People learned so much more about working with people of different generations by first-hand experience than they ever could have from a textbook or lecture.

Along their journeys, the participants in both the experiments grew exponentially in their ability to relate to one another. I see that reflected in the comments recorded from the mosaic project. While several were discouragingly negative, others expressed enlightenment and a realization of what it takes to relate to an estranged group of people. Students had to let go of reservations and try to place themselves in the lives of those at the shelter. One student commented that they did not think they should design the mosaic to look joyful because it wouldn't accurately reflect the community it was being created for. They worked together to come up with the idea of hope. Hope was something everyone could relate to.

I enjoyed both the mosaic project and the wetlands lessons. The things I liked about the mosaic project were the amount of reflection that everyone did (including the instructor), the participation of the mosaic artist Isaiah Zagar, the collaboration with the community center, and the immediate impact it had on the lives of those effected by poverty. The mosaic was keeping clients busy and involved, and it gave them a sense of purpose and pride in their new skills. I appreciated that the professor incorporated the hurricanes and disaster relief issues as they became relevant. I thought the project as portrayed in the chapter seemed a little weak in participation. The students seemed to detach themselves from the process quickly after it started. I wonder if there isn't some way that the students could have been more enthused about the project. Perhaps they needed to choose the topic themselves, instead of being told that homelessness and poverty was their only choice. The students did not take ownership over the project the way they may have had they had more of a say in its planning and implementation.

The wetlands project in particular I can relate to because I am a nature enthusiast. I would love to replicate this project in creating a rain garden some day with my students. The parts of this lesson I would keep include collaborating with experienced naturalists, an outdoor experience relevant to the project, and impacting the environment in a positive way. I wonder how much collaboration was done with homeroom teachers for this project. The project could have been timed so that students could have been studying wetlands in class as well. That way, they could have also planned what plants to put in the garden! Just one more way to make it hit home. I have a friend that teaches environmental science in higher ed. that would love to work with youth to transfer some of her enthusiasm for the environment to another generation. Not to mention, I have another acquaintance who is the biggest insect enthusiast I have ever known! She could visit my classroom to talk about insects, and we could have a field trip to capture and release them before drawing or otherwise creating insects ourselves.

In developing my service learning project, the ideas that I have taken from these two chapters include finding and using a mentor, making the project relevant and intergenerational, and including lots of reflection activities and ways to document the experience.

Discovering Service Learning Projects

I am thrilled to be collaborating with the Boys & Girls Club for my service learning project. I e-mailed the Waterloo Unit Director, Ashley Stewart, proposing an interview in the near future with her volunteer coordinator. At this interview, I would like to discuss the ways that the Boys & Girls Club uses mentorship as a tool to build communities. I will use this information to formulate a secondary level lesson plan targeting mentor and leadership roles. This lesson plan will incorporate service learning through social service with the organization. While the specifics of my project have not been laid out, my objectives for this lesson are that students review mentorship in their own lives before experiencing the impact of being a mentor firsthand. I am partial to using the media of photography or clay, similar to the Finding Oral Culture and Urban Stories or Eco-Wall of Hope projects from our Art Education for Social Justice textbook. Key ideas I am keeping in mind while planning my service learning project are: discovering the needs of the population I am working with, ensuring both sides gain something significant from the experience, building art skills in the process, and the students reflecting on what they learned. Confidently hitting these four targets will justify my lesson's creation, and demonstrate the value of using service learning in the classroom.