A Science Unit You Can Hang From the Ceiling

A sheet of white paper. A pencil outline. A tray of watercolours with the blue already wet. On a desk at Utsalady Elementary this week, an animal is coming up out of the paper one brushstroke at a time.

It is a science lesson.

It is also an art lesson, and that is the entire idea.

Five animals, five mediums, one mobile

Third-graders in two Utsalady classrooms spent this week with teaching artist Holly Stafford, through Afternoon of the Arts. The project ran alongside their science unit on animals — specifically the five main groups of vertebrates: mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians.

Each session the students studied a featured artist, then worked in that artist’s medium to make one of the five animals. Five animals, five different ways of making something. At the end of the week the five pieces come together into a single hanging mobile, so the science and the art turn on the same string.

That is a tidy piece of design, and it did not happen by accident. Stafford built the lessons with the classroom teachers rather than beside them, which is the difference between a visiting artist and a visit from an artist.

Why it has to happen during the school day

There is no art programming in the elementary schools of the Stanwood-Camano School District. That is more than 2,500 students, ages 5 to 12, going through a school day with no art class in it. The middle schools and high schools do offer art, but as an elective — something a student has to opt into, and many never do.

Afternoon of the Arts closes that gap from the other direction. The artists come into the room during the school day, so the lesson reaches every student in it — the one who already calls herself an artist, and the one who has never been handed a brush and told that the work was his.

A week like this one is what that looks like in practice. Not an enrichment hour bolted onto the end of the day. A science unit, taught partly by an artist.

The district told this story itself

The post below is not ours. It was written and published by the Stanwood-Camano School District, on the district’s own account, about work happening inside the district’s own classrooms.

We think that is worth more than anything we could write about ourselves. When a school district takes the time to photograph a program, explain how it works and ask its own families to come and see the results, the program has stopped being an outside visitor.

Underneath it, Holly Stafford left a comment of her own:

“These two classrooms have AMAZING artists! I can’t wait for you to see their finished magical mobiles! Thank you Meyer Art Center for the opportunity to explore art with our community and schools!”

The district also thanked the volunteers and the classroom teachers, which is the correct order of thanks. A teaching artist can only do this work in a room somebody else has already made ready.

What made the week possible

Afternoon of the Arts is supported by The Olson Foundation. That support is the reason there was a teaching artist in those two classrooms at all — paid for her time, with materials bought and a curriculum built alongside the teachers.

It is not an abstraction, and it is not overhead. It is the difference between a week like this one and a week without it.

It is also not permanent. Grant funding gets renewed; it does not get guaranteed. And the plan for this program is deliberately bigger than any single funder can carry: Afternoon of the Arts is growing school by school toward every school in the district — eight classes over five weeks at Utsalady this fall, homeschool families at the Saratoga School Family Learning Center for the first time, and Elger Bay Elementary, Twin City Elementary and Stanwood Elementary joining in the spring.

Every one of those is a cost before it is a classroom. Teaching artists are paid. Materials are bought. Someone builds the curriculum with the teachers before anybody opens a paint tray.

Come and see the mobiles

The work these students made goes up on the walls at the Holiday Open House and Student Art Show — Wednesday, December 16, 5:00 to 8:00 PM at The Floyd in Stanwood. Afternoon of the Arts projects from Utsalady and from Saratoga will both be there. It is free, and families are welcome.

Come for the mobiles. Stay for the particular kind of pride involved in an eight-year-old walking a grandparent across a room to point at something they made.

How to keep this going

The Olson Foundation started this. Finishing it — every school in the district, year after year — takes more than one funder. Here is where everyone else comes in.

• Give — a gift to the Meyer Art Center supports Afternoon of the Arts directly. Our year-end campaign, Before the Doors Open, runs through December 31, and gifts are matched by board funds while those funds last.
• Volunteer in the schools — the district runs its own volunteer process, and it would love to hear from you. Volunteers were in the room this week.
• Teach with us — artists who want to share their work through Afternoon of the Arts can write to programs@meyerartcenter.org.
• Bring it to your school — if you work in a school and want to talk through what this takes, the same address reaches our programming team.

Afternoon of the Arts is taught by Meyer artists — a mix of professional, working and local artists, established and emerging, from this community. Students see a real practice up close, and the artists are paid to teach in their own town.

This week that meant five animals, five mediums and one mobile. Next week it means something else, in another room, for another class of kids who do not otherwise get an art lesson.

Photographs by the Stanwood-Camano School District.

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Afternoon of the Arts is supported by The Olson Foundation.

olsonfoundation.org