Day 2 of Sol Lewitt Project: Calm
to Chaos, Collaboration to Cooperation, Communication to Coordination, and of
course, creativity.
My apologies for all of the alliteration but I am an English teacher at heart. The past two days have been the best I have known as an educator. It is unbelievable to me what children are capable of when we let them think outside of the box. I almost feel guilty taking credit for any of their success because they are so self-directed in the tasks of the past two days that it must be their inherent will to collaborate or their amazing middle school teachers. If you insist, I will take credit for the structures of this assignment, and the risk-taking it entailed.
My apologies for all of the alliteration but I am an English teacher at heart. The past two days have been the best I have known as an educator. It is unbelievable to me what children are capable of when we let them think outside of the box. I almost feel guilty taking credit for any of their success because they are so self-directed in the tasks of the past two days that it must be their inherent will to collaborate or their amazing middle school teachers. If you insist, I will take credit for the structures of this assignment, and the risk-taking it entailed.
Before we
began this journey of constructing an 8x40 foot mural which will be displayed
at Morristown High
School , in the Morris
Museum of Art, and then around Morristown , I was
apprehensive, nervous, unsure, and anxiety-ridden. I didn’t know where this journey would take
the freshman. Think about it…here I am asking
them to read directions critically (directions that require reading, math, and
logic skills), prototype a design, agree on the best design, and execute that
design on an 8x8 panel. After that, I am
asking them to blog about their role for the day, which rotates through the
experience. Each day students will
either be prototyping/drawing, filming, or analyzing some aspect of the
process. This request is a tall order
for students who are used to sitting in their desks and taking notes.
I don’t
want to become overly optimistic, but I can’t help it. The past two days have shown me students who want
to work together, who can overcome adversity, and who can challenge themselves
and their classmates with respect and poise.
The first two days of this project saw students measuring, talking, focused, engaged, and IN
THE MOMENT. What a concept: in the
moment, working hard, observing others, and seeing the results of their productivity
on something that won’t be thrown out or never referenced again after its due
date. It didn’t end there, students were
blogging about the dynamics of their group, the divisions of the class, the
leaders, the connections to academia, and their progress as a class.
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I cannot
wait to see if the remaining weeks of this project are as epic as I’ve imagined
them, I have no reason to believe otherwise.
I hope the momentum continues. Of course, the creative trick is to bring the epiphanies experienced in school to outside the school into the real world. Transform the world instead of the other way around. Creativity should be so strong it impacts the negative forces of death and destruction in the world.
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