Art Classes Help Lane School Students Cope

Frida Cartlow. Vincent Van Go. They tell you a lot about the creative ways Jennifer Ferrari has adapted her Job Lane School art classes to the exigencies of Covid-19.

The first-year Lane teacher said she has been on the move in the building this academic year. The materials she needs for her classes are packed on carts, which she wheels into classrooms. She chose Frida after the artist Frida Kahlo. Her students named the other cart, “because it’s as big as a van and it goes places.”

“We embrace a choice-based art education model where it’s a student-directed environment, so rather than me forming projects that the kids create, they come up with their own ideas, figure out how to execute them, what materials they need, and throughout class we practice studio habits,” Ferrari explained.

“So it was a challenge to figure out how to do that on a cart. But I think we’ve hit a stride now. I feel really confident about it – I think it has for the most part been pretty smooth. In terms of us being adaptable, the kids and I have both been pretty flexible and easy-going about things.”

“In the choice environment, every time a student works on something they’re totally engaged in it because it’s their own idea,” she continued. “So all the work I have seen this year has been authentic.”

Early in the year teachers distributed “art bags” to all students, with various materials. Still, Ferrari said, “it just makes it a little more challenging when they don’t have their peers, and they can’t really show their work.” There is an effort at collaboration through Zoom’s breakout rooms feature, she said.

“I have seen wonderful work come out of remote classrooms from kids who feel comfortable being independent their entire school day.”

“Kids are so resilient,” Ferrari observed. “Once they got so used to everything, they began to express ideas that had a lot of meaning to them, that were important socially and emotionally for them.”

“Rather than making art relative to what’s happening, they were focusing on things that helped them get through it, being able to identify what makes me happy, helps me get through my day,” she continued.

She described in detail a particularly original piece of artwork by a fifth-grader “that showed her perception of what happened.” The student took a piece of aluminum foil, crumpled it into a ball, then unfolded it and added colors with markers.

“She explained that the foil was the earth before the pandemic. The balled foil represented everyone isolated and stuck at home,” the teacher-related. As she tried to pull it apart, pieces were falling off – some things are gone, physical things or ways of seeing the world. The coloring is the vaccine. It made total sense and made me thankful she was able to process it that way.”

“We have worked with drawing, painting, collage, and sculpture,” Ferrari said. “We didn’t get to do as much as we wanted, but everyone has used clay or Model Magic. There has been 3-D work, but not like a normal year.”

Students, she continued, “were able to learn other techniques and other ways of building and manipulating a pliable material. They still got what they needed, just not at a deep level. Material usage was crammed into smaller periods of time, but we were still able to hit the big ideas.”

Ferrari said the peculiarities of scheduling have precluded her from seeing all grades at the same time during the year. She has scheduled some additional sessions on Zoom to compensate.

Meanwhile, full in-person learning has returned, as have some students on remote. “The numbers are starting to really come down – I am so excited about the demand for in-person. They get the most out of interaction with their class and the teacher,” Ferrari said.

Ferrari organized some original and unusual virtual activities to help students and their families navigate the year’s difficulties. There was the ugly sweater design contest in December and a Valentine’s Day theme in February, with dozens of families logged onto Zoom.

“In some districts, the arts are not supported as they should be. They are really critical to the development of the child. You can see the difference,” she professed. “I can’t stress enough how much it affects their ability to create, to have a growth mindset, and to learn how to collaborate with each other. These things are so critical to the rest of their lives.”

There will be a K-12 community art show this year, in early June, but again only online. For the show, Ferrari said, “I want to focus not only on finished pieces but also the process, which is equally if not more important than the product.” A viewer, she said, should be able to “see how an artist engages with the materials and the idea.” She also strives for “getting students to think of themselves as artists in a studio and doing what artists do.”

Additional information about the art classes at Lane School is available at
https://sites.google.com/bedfordps.org/laneschoolvisualarts.