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Art teacher Jesse Steiner (in Groucho Marx disguise) holds the wheel while a student spins to see which tool he will use to paint.
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When art teacher Jesse Steiner recently brought a few canvasses created during a schoolwide project to the Putnam | Northern Westchester BOCES administrative building, he expected to hang up one or two. As staff members stopped to admire the work, however, he quickly realized he would need to bring back more canvases.
"Everyone seemed to want to choose one to hang in their offices or the halls," he recalled. Steiner was struck by the staff's appreciation for the art and the process behind it - and by the strong feeling of community that stretches between the educational and administrative sides of PNW BOCES.
The canvasses that are now being added to the administrative building are certainly striking. What's even more striking is how they were created.
During a month of classes at the Pines Bridge and Walden schools, Steiner and teaching assistant Debra Canzio turned the process of creating art into a "game show" involving all students. Dressed like a game-show host, complete with a fake nose and glasses disguise, Steiner created an exciting atmosphere designed to engage his students.
Each week, students spun a wheel to choose a tool to add paint to a class canvas. The implements included traditional tools such as brushes and ones specially devised by Steiner, such as basketballs attached to rollers or catapults that launched cat toys dipped in paints across the room. As the project went on, the painting tools went from large brushes and rollers involving large-motor skills to smaller brushes and stamps that required more fine-motor skills.
Introduced by Steiner as if they were guests in a show, the students all had moments in the limelight contributing to their class's canvas. They also spent time "in the audience" supporting their classmates.
"Regardless of the students' goals and needs, and their functional level, we were able to target our instruction to make it appropriate," Steiner said. The project challenged the students in many areas including motor skills planning, language and communication, attention to a task and appropriate participation in a group.
"The kids were having so much fun, however, they didn't perceive it as educational," Steiner noted. The fun atmosphere helped students feel more comfortable about picking up a tool and helping make a piece of artwork come alive.
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Art teacher Jesse Steiner and teaching assistant Debra Canzio pose with some of the unusual tools students used to create abstract paintings.
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"When they can be 'in the moment,' that's when the magic happens," he said. "They're not thinking about something that upset them earlier or a task they don't want to do later in the day."
While Steiner and Canzio tweaked each week's activity to ensure that individual students were working on their educational goals, they also had a larger aim in mind.
"We wanted all of the students to feel a sense of pride in their creation," he said. "We wanted them to feel a sense of belonging, of being part of a community, and this is the type of project that helps create that feeling."
