Onondaga Hill Middle School with Ginger Dunlap-Dietz - “Service Learning: Curriculum Links to Community Service”
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In conjunction with our commitment to using service learning as a part of education, we created an interdisciplinary project linking curriculum to the social issues of hunger and homelessness in our community.
Our proposal was to have our 6th grade students, along with our 8th grade Studio in Art students acting as mentors, explore the issues of hunger and homelessness through reading, reflection, historical perspective and actively working with the hungry and homeless in our community in a Service Learning capacity. Further, we wanted to provide a medium for our students to “put a face on hunger and homelessness” through visual arts media.
Our students are inundated with information and photos through an array of media sources that depict a myriad of social issues in our world. Although most of our students have never experienced hunger or homelessness, when faced with thoughts, observations and decisions related to these areas, students develop empathy. This may be for a character in literature, a historical figure or observing a panhandler or bag person at a traffic light or in a city. It takes time for this to become real to them, and visiting, working and role playing at a food pantry helped personalize these issues further.
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a detail of the mural - "Soup Kitchen" |
The core group met beginning in August, and we continued to plan, organize through September. Our teaching artists began learning the curriculum of 6th graders. Academic teachers outlined curriculum and set structures for the days. Art teachers and teaching artists mixed with our 6th graders in core academic and art classes establishing rapport, building vocabulary and motivating students to stretch their creativity. A whole group assembly, orchestrated by our teaching artists, outlined the project for the students.
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Above: a student sets tiles into a panel.
Right: students work with the artists to clean the tiles and remove excess grout.
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The classroom work began! Ideas were generated, drafts and sketches drawn, themes targeted, experiences enhanced, and after several sessions, students began to merge ideas into a visual representation. Individual tiles merged with other designs, and under the guidance and gifted eyes of our teaching artists, the mural built and grew and expanded - and at times even refined (after the visit to the food consortium, which helped students expand their image of hunger and homelessness). Student reflections were ongoing in coordination with their academic learning, including journaling, double entry notetaking, letter writing and experiential reflection.
Left: detail - "Jobs"
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Linking the visual arts with our integrated curriculum work allowed students to create an individual interpretation of a dynamic and salient issue, which lives, works and exists in our community. By designing a tile depicting these social issues from an individual’s interpretation, our students put a face on hunger and homelessness. That tile merges with hundreds more to create a wall mural, which forever houses what is important to this school community.
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Above: a proud participating parent
Right: viewing the installed mural on the school building wall.
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You can see more pictures of the mural in progress at www.ohmsartgallery.com
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