What happens when 600 elementary and middle school students work together to create an innovative learning space?
Overview
Heritage Middle School embarked upon a year-long multi-school project to bring life and color to our courtyard. The project, built by our students, will fill the courtyard with ceramic flowers and plants to create an outdoor learning space and create an opportunity for current and future students to leave a lasting legacy in a tangible way.
The courtyard at HMS has seen greatly expanded use by both staff and students in recent years. Students are allowed to eat lunch at the tables in this space, and teachers frequently hold class here, weather permitting. The initial intention of the Community Garden project was to enhance the courtyard and lend itself to the continued growth of this important community space within the school and provide a unique opportunity for students to take ownership of the environment and to leave a lasting legacy for future students.They will share personal experiences with nature, their thoughts on ecology, and the future of the planet. They will discuss together through videos and writing how their garden will tie to several UN SDG’s including climate action, sustainable communities, and responsible consumption.
After fifth grade, art becomes an elective for Hilliard students. To keep young adults interested in the arts we must provide opportunities for them to see their work valued and “real life” examples of how art can create social change by bringing communities together. What better way than to have it on display for years to come? Additionally, this long-lasting artwork is a visual example of our school motto: “Start a Legacy, Leave a Legacy.” Through a wide variety of learning opportunities we were able to bring our Community Garden to life.
Visiting Artist, John Sabraw
To kick off the project HMS hosted environmental activist and eco artist John Sabraw in partnership with the Wexner Center at Ohio State. It was an inspirational day on so many levels! Sabraw turns toxic river sludge from coal mine polluted streams into the most beautiful range of iron oxide pigments. Students learned the chemistry behind this process in a hands-on demonstration. They then used some of the new paint to make their own artworks using Sabraw’s techniques. The connections between art and science, the environment and our actions, enabled students to see that they too can be part of the change to help our planet…and make great artwork too! I loved having a professional artist in to talk to the kids, it gives them a great sense of how artists work in the real world to create change. While we did not use these artworks in the creation of the garden, it set the stage for students to think about how art can be a catalyst for change.
Elementary Connections
Caring for our environment is a worldwide issue, an idea I wanted to really explore with our students. While we tried to make a global connection and work with students from another country, logistics got in the way and made us unable to find a partner. Instead we decided to look within our own district and partner up with elementary students! The relationships formed between middle schoolers and their elementary buddies, and the stories/sharing that come out of them, influenced the final shape our Global Garden. The students from the three elementaries we partnered with will eventually come to Heritage Middle School, and hopefully having this early connection to the school will help them transition into a new space.
In order for the two ages of students to work together we came up with a series of materials that could be shared asynchronously. Together with the elementary art teachers we made a questionnaire for both MS and Elementary students as a “get-to-know-you” guide. We loved the idea of having the kids make a video introduction to their partner! I think seeing the other students and hearing them will really helped form a connection between the two ages! Our district uses google apps from elementary up. The nice thing about using google drive for sharing the introductory videos and design pages is that students can directly upload items right to their drive folder! Simple! My students would check daily to see if they had any new messages or images from their elementary school buddies.
After getting to know each other, elementary students worked with their teachers to design plants both real and fictional that would have a positive impact on our environment here in Ohio. Here's an example of the sketching sheets students used. They shared these worksheets and images with their buddies, who were very impressed by their ingenuity and clever ideas! At this point the middle school students, and staff members who joined our buddy system, did their best to recreate the drawn designs in clay. The art room bloomed with so many varieties of flowers it was unreal! In total we created nearly 300 flowers!
Community Connections
In addition to encouraging students to think more about ecological issues, I wanted to continue to build a sense of community. Afterall, we’ll all have to work together to make significant changes to our world! We began by fostering relationships through our elementary and middle school buddy system, but knew we wanted to include the greater community as well.
First we partnered with Buckeye Ceramics Supply, a local company, to provide workshops to students and parents about how to craft the ceramic flowers, and how to glaze them. My students always love having artist visitors, they learned so much about creating naturalistic forms!
While the flowers themselves were to be made by students, the sculptures were also going to need leaves. This led to an amazing night of fun involving parents, siblings, and staff members! On conference night we set up an impromptu studio in the cafeteria and invited everyone walking by to learn more about our project and participate by making a leaf. Franklin Park Conservatory, our local botanical garden and horticulture institute, donated leaves from a vast variety of their plants. Family members, students, and staff pressed the leaves into wet clay, cut them out, and added a layer of underglaze. Parents especially were a little nervous at first to dig down into the clay, but quickly became enthralled as their students taught them how it was done. It was great to watch the students become the teachers.
Bringing It All Together
Since the start of the project my students asked to meet their buddies in person. At first I wasn’t sure how we might make that happen simply due to the logistics of a large district, scheduling and transportation. But as we worked through each step of creating the flowers the perfect opportunity presented itself. The other art teachers and I decided to bring all of the students together to glaze the pieces, allowing the buddies to work on the final stage of their flowers together. We transformed our cafeteria into a massive art studio for one school day, invited the elementary students over, and painted away. It was amazing watching the kids meet their buddies, work together, and just chat about the work they had done. The celebratory and creative energy could not be contained.
I hope when the younger students come to Heritage in the coming years they feel as though they already have a piece of themselves here, both through the art and connections they made.
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