Students Lead in Social Arts!
At Crossroads, we strive to establish and continually maintain our own positive connections to students as well as those between students. While we focus on the basics of social communication and working in peer groups during our classes, there is one daily gathering that brings it all together, creating multiple opportunities to examine and build new social skills. Social Arts is a class where students work in groups to collaborate on creative projects, encountering many challenging social situations along the way. From sharing ideas, listening to each other, compromising, and considering other opinions, to resolving conflicts and clarifying intent in the moment, the class is designed to allow for essential and authentic learning.
Created by our ELA teacher, Todd Martin, and myself, with support from art teacher, Josh Perez, we wanted to establish a routine meetup for students where their own ideas lead to amazing realities, including the process of working together to get there. We have created collaborative artwork, written songs, filmed videos, planned 2 successful night events designed by the students, collected and framed finished work for an art show, and voting on a food truck to deliver our Friday pizza.
Our recent projects have focused on a variety of art styles. Cartooning is a major interest for many of our students, including Parker, who suggested we consider a few styles to study. She has developed a unique style of her own that is admired by her peers. After suggesting a few examples of cartoon styles that inspired her own art, she agreed to teach elements of cartooning to our class!
Breaking down the development of her own characters, Parker explained and demonstrated how she chooses eyes, noses, clothing, body shapes, and other details to convey character traits. The class had lots of questions for her as she presented her drawing techniques. Next, Parker lead a step-by-step drawing of one of her main characters, while students followed along building their own version of her drawing on their papers. Parker walked around making individual comments while watching her own style ideas being explored by her peers. We closed the week with Parker making comparisons between the artists and characters who’ve had the most influence on her. It was awesome to see Parker sharing her passion with the class as a natural and inspiring teacher!
Be sure to look out for announcements about Nightrageous 3, May 17
th
, where these cartooning pieces will be shown in addition to other collaborative artwork and other surprises.
Mitch Pengra
Head of Social Development
(713) 977-1221 x115
