The Duniway Dragonian Blog Banner Hall of Fame

I so wish I could share with you the amazing ("impressive," as the school secretary said) blog that the kids at Duniway School (mostly third graders) are creating in my DIY Lounge-sponsored Cool School class, Duniway Dragonian: Blogging for the 21st Century, Kid Style.

I can't share the link because it is a password-protected blog for Duniway families only, but I can share this - the Duniway Dragonian Blog Banner Hall of Fame! Back when it was a printed 8-page old-style analog school newspaper (which I taught in the 2007-08 school year, publishing four issues per year before hitting on the idea of making it a blog instead), we called these banners "mastheads," of course. I've put together a collection of all the mastheads/banners that the kids have created since I've been the journalism teacher and am sharing them here.

Above is the most current design, and may I mention how exciting it is to be able to do these in color now! (In the old "black and white days" of the school newspaper this was not an option because of the printing cost.)

February - March 2009

May-June 2008

March 2008

Winter 2007-08

Winter 2007-08 (back page version)

Fall 2007

Fall 2007 (back page version)

This class has been going really well and I am thoroughly enjoying just about every aspect of it (the main exception being that I really don't like using typepad, but it was my only option for creating a password-protected blog).

In case you are wondering, "What do third graders blog about?", here are some of the topics that they have chosen this year:

• The movie Coraline
• Book reviews on Indie Kidd, Esperanza Rising, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and the dictionary (yes, these kids READ!)
• The Portland Trail Blazers' Rudy Fernandez
• The internet game Poptropica
• Restaurant reviews of Bellagios Pizza, Sweet Tomatoes, and Otto's Sausage Kitchen
• Field trips to places like the Oregon Humane Society
• Duniway events and fundraisers like the talent show, the canned food drive, the auction, and the book fair
• Interviews with friends and teachers
• Ice skating at Lloyd Center
• Horse riding at Fir Hollow and Quiet Rein
• Spring soccer
• Politics, the economy & the war on terror (including a video interview with a Reed College political science professor)
• Barack Obama
• Favorite pets (like chickens!)
• Bugs, bugs, and more bugs
• Comics, illustrations, and much more

All the photos are taken by the kids, and all the stories are written by them (I do quite a bit of editing, of course). We also did a group interview with some fifth grade boys who are in an awesome (and gigging!) rock band called the DiJiTs, and I'm working on writing up that story right now. I also work with them on typepad to show them how to upload photos, create links, and post their stories. They are doing an amazing job!

Speaking of Duniway, guess what - the annual student art show is going on next week! If you read the series I wrote on Etsy's blog (the Storque) - Parents Teach Art and Parents Teach Art Part 2 - you may be interested in checking this out, so if you are in the Portland area, I highly recommend it!

It's free and open to the public on Wednesday, April 29 and Thursday, April 30 from 5:30 - 8:30 pm at Duniway Elementary School, 7700 SE Reed College Place in Portland, Oregon. On-site activities will include having a portrait drawn by student artists, a hands-on clay table, and music performed by the DiJiTs!

Art Camp, Day 3: More mandalas!

Today at art camp the kids continued to work on their awesome vinyl record mandalas!

And I did one too! Here is my work in progress:
What a fun way to spend two hours in the afternoon! And getting paid for it too...yeah, I love this job.

Parents Teach Art - a DIY Approach to Elementary School Art Education

The following article, written by me, was published yesterday in the Storque.

Where I live, there are billboards all over town that simply say, "Art. Ask for More." At the bottom is a line of smaller print that says, "Are your kids getting enough?"

As an artist and a mother of two, I feel fortunate that my kids attended a public elementary school with a thriving, well-established, award-winning art education program that is available to every student during the regular school day for twelve weeks out of the year.

This is rare. Many schools have after-school programs with enrichment classes or occasional projects with artists-in-residence, but very few public schools have a comprehensive art program incorporated into their regular curriculum. Portland, Oregon's Duniway School, which my kids attended, is even more impressive when you consider that they don't even have an art teacher. Instead, the entire program is organized, funded and taught by parent volunteers.

Are you a parent who is frustrated by the lack of art education at your child's school? Are you "asking for more" but still not getting enough? Maybe it's time to take matters into your own hands, in the true DIY spirit. This is the first in a two-part series that will provide some tips and resources for starting and maintaining a parent-led art program at the elementary school level.


[First grade "Sunflowers" lesson based on the work of Van Gogh.]

Start Small
All you really need to start is one classroom and one lesson plan. Talk to your child's teacher at the beginning of the year. Ask for a chance to come in for one hour to teach a fun, simple art lesson. What teacher could refuse that? To find great lesson plans specifically for your child's grade level, you can visit the Duniway Art website at www.duniwayart.org.


[The Duniway Art website]

These lessons were all designed to be taught by parent volunteers who don't necessarily have any art or teaching experience. Passionate parent artists like Michelle Smit, a mom of two boys who creates abstract paintings and fused glass works, revamp the lessons each year based on student and parent feedback to ensure they are fresh, relevant, and easy to understand. Michelle also makes sure these aren't "cookie cutter" projects, but rich, meaningful lessons that engage the child's heart, encouraging free expression, imagination and "happy accidents." The program encourages exploration of a wide variety of media, while building technical skills and incorporating art history and multiculturalism.


[Artist and parent volunteer Michelle Smit with her favorites from the fourth grade Picasso lesson, which she wrote.]

The program earned Duniway an Oregon Creative Ticket Schools award last year from the Oregon Alliance for Art Education and the Kennedy Center Alliance for Arts Education.

Duniway's lessons are all downloadable PDF files with sample images of student artwork. Each lesson includes the concept and objective of the class, prep work and supplies needed, vocabulary words and detailed instructions for teaching the lesson. Pick one and try it out in your kid's class. Or take a look at some of the many other great art lesson plans on the web (see the Further Resources list below for some links). Or, write your own lesson plan! You don't have to do it all alone — team up with your spouse, a friend, grandma, another parent or neighborhood volunteer to make this an experience the kids will never forget. Take pictures and have fun!


[Fourth grade "Sumi-E" lesson based on Chinese brush painting.]

Get the Community Involved
If you'd like to take this beyond just teaching one class and create a school-wide art program like Duniway's, there are three elements you must have in place: support and commitment from the school, help from lots of parent volunteers, and funding to buy supplies.

Talk to your principal and teachers to see if they could carve out one "art hour" per week for up to twelve weeks. Explain that parent volunteers will be doing all the work. If there are objections that art time will take away from valuable time teaching other subjects, point to Duniway as an example. Duniway is consistently rated an "exceptional" school year after year, based on high test scores and overall academic achievement — yet kids take time out for art, physical education and music one or more times each week. It's no surprise, really — according to Americans for the Arts (the group behind those billboards), kids actively engaged in arts education are likely to have higher test scores than those with little to no involvement.


[Fifth grade "Musical Collage" lesson]

Start talking to your school community. Find out how many parents are interested in art and are available for an hour or so a week to volunteer. Find out which parents own print shops, frame shops, art supply stores or other businesses that can help out with in-kind donations.


[First grade "Houses" lesson]

If your school has a PTA or similar organization, find out if you can form an art committee. With a handful of like-minded parents, your committee can begin to recruit and train parent volunteers and organize fundraising efforts to pay for supplies. How much funding will you need? At Duniway, the PTA's art committee has a budget of $4000 each year, which includes all supplies, as well as expenses related to putting on an annual Student Art Show. With a population of around 400, this averages out to only $10 per kid! As Michelle Smit says, "Where in the world could you purchase 12 great art lessons, including supplies, for under $10.00?"

Further Resources:
EyePopArt's blog post about the 2008 Duniway Student Art Show
Duniway Art
Princeton Online - Incredible Art Lessons
The Educator's Reference Desk
National Endowment for the Arts - State and Regional Art Agencies
Lowe's Toolbox for Education
Americans for the Arts
Arts Education Partnership
National PTA
No Subject Left Behind - A Guide to Arts Education Opportunities

Coming Next Week...
Stay tuned! Next week we will take a closer look at how the program works, including roles and responsibilities of the art committee, scheduling classes, teaching tips, and ideas for hosting an exhibit of student art.

Mandalas from Buckman art camp

Last week, I taught a series of art classes for the Buckman Elementary "Celebrating Art" summer camp, a gig I got thanks to Jen at the DIY Lounge. The kids made clay pots and clay animals, explored printmaking, did a sgraffito project, and, of course, made beautiful mandalas!





The one below is just incredibly delightful to me, it's so different, imaginative, and childlike.
I will post photos of the other projects in another post - gotta run, it's my first day back at work at Trillium after a week of "vacation" (actually teaching a camp for three hours a day is a lot more tiring than 8 hours at my desk!).

P.S. We are playing a show at Satyricon tonight - come out and play if you are in Portland! It's all ages!

The Duniway Art Show

Last week, I had the extreme pleasure of attending the Duniway Student Art Show! I love the theme they chose this year, it kind of sounds familiar...

This year, the Duniway art committee has made some great additions - they've switched to using a digital projector and laptop to show art history slide shows, they've created an amazing new website, and they managed to extend the art show to three days instead of just one!

I love the beautiful subtlety of the watercolor haiku lesson (above) and the sumi-e ink painting lesson (below).

The majority of these lesson plans were written by the fantastic, incredible, brilliant Michelle Smit (pictured below with her favorites - the "Picassos"). Michelle and I worked together on the art program for years, and she is continuing to carry the torch and doing a great job along with the rest of the art committee. I'm so proud of them!

My favorites are the abstracts, for sure.



But I also love the more realistic pieces like these self-portrait value studies:

This is just a small selection, I really had to restrain myself to not make this post too long, but I could go on forever! Below are some of the nifty ceramic animals made by 2nd graders:

On April 1 of this year, the Duniway Art Program was presented with a Creative Ticket School of Excellence Award by the Kennedy Center Alliance for Arts Education and the Oregon Alliance for Arts Education. I am so proud and so honored to have played a part in this great achievement.
I know that a lot of people come across this blog while searching for children's art lesson plans, so if that's what you are looking for, I strongly encourage you to visit the new website, www.duniwayart.org. You'll find everything you could possibly want for grades K - 5 - painting, printmaking, ceramics, wire sculpture, sand painting, outdoor art with natural objects, collage, mandalas (yeah!), pop art, wood sculpture, still life, surrealism, impressionist landscapes, and much more, all interwoven with art history and muliculturalism. The lesson plans are all on there as PDF downloads with sample images of finished projects.

These lessons were all specifically designed to be taught by parent volunteers who don't necessarily have any art or teaching experience. It has worked incredibly well at Duniway. So get out there and start bringing art education back to the elementary schools - here's proof that it is possible!

My awesome summer job

This summer I am working as a ceramics instructor at Art Adventures, the kids summer camp at Oregon College of Art and Craft.

I work in a tent in the midst of a beautiful orchard full of bunnies and blackberries.

The main projects I teach each week are pots and animals. The little kids do pinch pots and the older ones do coil pots. They all get to make clay animals (or imaginative creatures). They are all fired and glazed.

Below are some examples of their finished work. I am so impressed and delighted by the kids' creativity and the beautiful artwork they make. This is probably the most fun I've ever had at a job.