My Students

Art students with big ideas about the world they live in need a place to collect their sketches, notes, and thoughts!

My students are creative thinkers and problem solvers and they show me every day that their ideas and thoughts are important to the world we live in.

At our school, 98% of our students are considered minorities and 75% qualify for free/reduced lunch. Many of my students come from homes where they themselves are taking on adult roles in their families, although you'd never hear them complain about their responsibilities. My students are very caring and nurturing toward each other and look at our small school community (375 students) as an extension of their family. My art students can often be found at lunch time and after school, and on weekends working on projects in our art studio.

My Project

This school year my students are going to have a sketchbook show at our school that coincides with a national sketchbook show that will be touring the United States in 2011 (http://www.arthousecoop.com/projects/sketchbookproject). Each student will receive a sketchbook and drawing materials to capture their ideas around one theme that they individually choose from a list of 10 themes. Students will use both class time and time outside school to draw, paint, collage, or anything they choose to transform their sketchbook. Students will exhibit their sketchbooks around our school (or possibly our city hall) in a culminating exhibition that coincides with our county's Art IS Education Month in March of 2011.

My students usually draw on scraps of paper that often get lost or end up in the recycling bin.

Students will rediscover the power and value of their work as artists with a new sketchbook that holds all of their drawings and ideas. Each student will receive their own drawing materials and for the first time they won't have to share or return them at the end of class. My students have few things that they can call their own, these materials will belong to them, and so will the ideas they share.