Meadow Hill art teacher helps students express themselves

Framed and proudly displayed in the entrance to Meadow Hill Middle School are dozens of unique pieces of student art the school has purchased each year for its permanent collection.

Throughout the meandering halls and hanging from ceilings other student artwork is featured giving beauty and warmth to the institutional brick building.

Even in the gym you can find Vicki s touch she s all over the building school principal Christina Stevens proudly said while escorting guests to art teacher Vicki Wallace s classroom.

She brings our walls to life and she even has a display of her art students three dimensional insects at the Missoula airport Stevens said. She extends beyond these walls to get the kids artwork out there to be seen and appreciated.

On Tuesday Wallace s eighth grade classes were bursting with pre holiday energy which was perfect for pounding lumps of gray clay into what will be colorful mosaic creatures.

A dinosaur turtle zebra nautilus reindeer and a crab were just some of the shapes that began to emerge from the hands and imaginations of their creators.

I m excited for the glass part of the process because it will be really fun to do all kinds of different things with colors said Aaliyah Woods as she worked on her zebra.

It is so nice to be able to experiment and see what you can make said Woods who explained art was her favorite class of the day. I m so glad we get to have art class. It lets you take your mind off things.

Although creating can be challenging it also helps to hit the restart button during the middle of the school day said Noah Dunn.

It s refreshing and it comes before lunch when you are getting antsy to go outside and before having to do lessons in classes that are harder to do he said. This definitely helps me concentrate better in classes later in the day.

As Wallace moves around the classroom stopping to work with each student or to ask leading questions about what each student is trying to achieve others work diligently on their projects while talking quietly with one another.

Creativity and community are at the heart of the day s lessons.

The biggest thing I want my kids to walk away with from my classroom is that they can be successful in a classroom that they can be expressive and they should celebrate their differences that it is wonderful to be different from everybody else said the 30 year veteran art teacher.

I really want them to work on being more expressive and to think about what is in their heads not anyone else s she said. I do a lot of critical thinking formative assessment in my lessons and we talk about strengths and weaknesses as in What is the focal point of this piece I do this so kids know that design is important in creating but so are contour lines color and shape.

The hands on lessons follow in depth discussions and examples of famous artists and how their styles impact society through the ages.

Michelangelo his use of color balance and composition and the breathtaking mosaics of ancient Greece and Rome for instance were some of the background lessons earlier in the month that helped launch the students current project Wallace said.

The underlying principle is that as these students get older they can use the knowledge in a more sophisticated way she said. It s a building process of skills of critical thinking of understanding things like composition are important to art but it is also important to telling a story or writing.

These aren t just art lessons these are transferable skills.

Articles Source here