Africa: The well is in at Nakateete School in Uganda!

One of the unique aspects of education is many times teachers plant "seeds of learning" in our students, yet it may be years before those seeds sprout. In other words, sometimes we get to see the fruits of our labor with our students in real, tangible ways. Other times it may be years down the road or even when they are adults when they use that prized seed that was planted many years prior...and, of course, ....usually the teacher doesn't get to see that! This spring my students who have heard about my experience in Uganda for the last three years surprised me in several ways. One of them won an international art contest with her painting of people in Kenya getting a water well. I also went to Kenya and told the students about my experiences there and showed them hundreds of photos. My students have heard these stories for three years...stories of how many blessings they have....how students in the school I worked in had no water source, had no school supplies of any kind, had never seen a crayon...and so on. But this year I got to see those seeds sprout in the most unexpected way. I have literally been haunted the last three years by an experience I had in Uganda when several men elders of the village invited me to their house, along with two other women, and told us of their great need for a water source. Their youngest children walked miles a day to get water, a dangerous daily trip for these four, five, and six year olds with their big yellow jugs. I always knew that somehow, someway I'd get a plan together to help them get a well. But...the plan began without me! And this is very exciting to me!! My students who were in this year's Recycling Club under the direction of wonderful Aimee Williams decided they wanted to put a water well in Uganda and Aimee knew of an organization, the Holden Uganda Foundation, that could do it. Aimee told me about the project and I was so excited. It took me literally about one-millionth of a second to ask Aimee if we could designate it for Nakateete! That began an investigation to trying to find the Nakateete School, a bit more difficult than you would think. It took a couple of weeks, but the school was located and some pictures sent to me to confirm officially let us designate that as the school I worked in. I saw Pastor Paul in the pics and recognized a couple of the children. Fast forward about two months. I received some photos this past week of the well being installed. It was such a gut wrenching moment for me. I recognized, I thought, quite a few of the children...even though it was three years later...and there was Pastor Paul in all the pics smiling. Pastor Paul works seven days a week as the head of the school without even one day off a year. He is amazing! The children, most are orphans, come from families who have been devastated by HIV/AIDS. In most tiny little mud brick houses, about the size of my bathroom, there is an adult or two of a wide variety of ages (several generations) and maybe 7-15 or more children. In Uganda families take in the HIV/AIDS orphans. It is frowned upon to only have your own family living with you. Upon close investigation....I looked at my photos closely from three years ago and many of the children in the new photos are very obviously children that I taught while I was there! Breathe! Heart stopped a beat! This is the BEST PART OF EDUCATION!!! It's not what "I" do. It's what I "teach." It will go down in history as one of the most awesome things that has happened while I have been teaching to see my students take what they have learned and decide to do something about it. It was one of the biggest joys of my life to get to join the effort! Now...next year we may try to help the village of 7,500 people with no water source get a well, too. (I'm going to go ahead and post this and edit it a bit later! Have an appointment!) This is a slide show of the bore hole for the well being finished, Pastor Paul and the children with their new well: This is a picture of me at Nakateete School in 2010 with students. Quite a few of the children in this picture with me in 2010 are in the picture of the new well! So exciting! They are three years older, but you can still tell it's many of the same students:

Italy: Collaborative Florence Wall with the Duomo

This past spring, as part of the Art Inspired by Italy Unit, my students in grades K-4 participated in a collaborative art project where we made a wall mural (actually a giant collage) of the Duomo in Florence, Italy and surrounding area. Kinder students helped color the bricks on the roof of the Duomo, other students made oil pastel panels for the church buildings, other students helped paint the clouds, the acrylic mural of houses, and the Arno River. It was exciting for the students to see the mural in various stages of development and taking shape on the wall over a couple of weeks time. It was quite the topic of conversation at school as well with many teachers and parents bringing their students down to the art end of the building to take their photos in front of the mural. Students really enjoyed this project and it evolved into higher level questioning about the purpose of the bigger building, why it was so much bigger than the other buildings, why their houses look different than ours, did their houses really look like that, and so on.  It also gave me opportunity to share some history with the students linking it to an architecture lesson.  I told the story of Bruneschelli, a jewelry maker, winning the "contest" to put the dome on the building after it had sat there domeless for a couple of years and as an eyesore for Florence.  Since Florence was greatly concerned with being the leading city in Italy at this time in history when the Medici's were the self appointed and elected leaders of Italy, the huge, open building with no roof was quite a problem.  One even became the Pope. It was quite an interesting history lesson. Globally inspired art lessons have such a unique ability to bring several disciplines to the art room and encourage students to think critically about the world they live on.  You can read more about the Duomo here: Click Here for Duomo Info 

Pippo the Fool by Tracey E. Fern is also a good children's book to read about the dome. Children find it interesting that it was an "egg," or so the legend says, that gave Bruneschelli the idea for the dome.

The Duomo is one of the architectural wonders of the world. Even to this day architects and engineers cannot quite figure out how Bruneschelli did it! It's a great story!


Here is a time lapse slide show of the collaborative wall mural being made and a few pictures of the real Duomo in Florence as well.

GLOBAL: Join the Crazy Colorful Color Wheel Project.

Peacocks and Rainbows is looking for art teachers and schools in differing countries that would like to partner in a Crazy Colorful Colorwheel Project Exchange.  The purpose of the project is to introduce out students to each other, whether they are from Omaha or Oman! If you are interested in partnering with another school please contact peacocksandrainbows@gmail.com. I will match you up with another school or you are welcome to use any contacts you have to find your own school to partner with. Any school level is fine, but I would suggest that you partner with a school of the same level, i.e. elementary with elementary.  Below is an introductory Power Point that you can show to your students to introduce the project. Please REGISTER and coordinate your efforts through Peacocks and Rainbows and the above email address because we are working on an awesome website and Facebook page that will function as an online gallery for the project as well begin mapping out how art is connecting the world through this project.  We'll also showcase some of the cultural aspects of the schools that participate! I also have a great instruction document I'll share with you when you contact me and let me know you want to participate with all kinds of tips to make the project go smoother, especially when partnering with a school in a different country.  If you have a Drop Box account you can access it easily there. If not, I'll email it to you.

Here is an introductory Power Point to show students to get them excited about the project. I also made this Power Point available to parents so they could watch it at home and assist with projects.  At the time this Blog was written the below link was tested and worked. If you have trouble with the link please email me!

Just click on the title below:

Crazy Colorful Colorwheel Intro Power Point

GLOBAL: Crazy Colorful Colorwheel Project

     Well, I'm not sure exactly where to begin with this post. And it has the potential to be a tad long! For quite some time I have been wanting to find a way to use art and technology together in a meaningful way, not just using some new app to yet again skew someone's face a certain way, but in a way that has long standing value. I thought about it for a couple of years and one day the idea just came. It's the Crazy Colorful Colorwheel Project. The project partners school students in one country with students in another country. It's in its infancy, but who knows where it might go! The point of the project is to communicate with another country, people group, or culture via technology and apps such as Skype and Drop Box, while using art as the exchange point. The color wheel is fundamental to art, and science for that matter. The idea is that students in one country either do a group project, team projects, or individual projects where they use the color wheel for inspiration and make a piece of ART, not a teaching poster about the colorwheel. The projects the students make will hopefully reveal something about their culture. Between Skyping, sharing of images and videos, and sharing art, hopefully students will be given a vehicle to learn more about each other. Young elementary school students can learn about life in another country. Extensions for this project are endless. That's another great aspect of the project. So that is a summary.
     My students' projects just flat out amazed me. They were all so different. Several did posters with different themes and designs. Some did projects that were very creative and didn't involve any financial expenditure, or hardly any. For example, one girl filled water bottles with water and food coloring and displayed them in a circle. One girl crocheted a huge, beautiful flower all by herself. Another girl took photos of herself in various positions of a cartwheel, cut them out, and then colored the black and white photos in color wheel order, and then placed them on a poster board in order with a fun border. Very cute! Quite a few did interesting paintings-one that stands out in my memory was a zebra with color wheel stripes. There were ball caps, and baseball bases, tutus, cupcakes, painted lightbulbs on a spinning wheel, a giant origami bird with color wheel feathers, umbrellas, birdhouses, and so, so, so much more. You'll have to see the slide show below. There is a photo of every student project. A couple aren't represented in the slide show. Two girls made wonderful Power Points and a boy did an amazing video. It's on the Crazy Colorful Color Wheel website. We gave several awards including Grand and Reserve Champion Overall, and then there were categories for awards including most colorful, neat and tidy, most unique, best use of technology, and a few others. Grand Champion went to an incredible bicycle wheel with paint chips attached to it in color wheel order. It could easily be a piece of art that someone hangs on their wall.  Second place was a gorgeous handmade tissue paper flower. The girl who made all the flowers, very tedious, taught several of my students how to make the flower petals using a golf ball as a base to wrap the pieces around. Very clever.
     Now, the first exchange happened between my third graders at Folsom Elementary School in Prosper, Texas and a The American School of Monterrey, Mexico (an English speaking school) this past April and May. I met a young art teacher, Barbara Martinez, at the NAEA National Convention when she came to a session I led on the C.A.R.E. Project which is the umbrella I have created over some of these projects which have the intent of teaching my students about the greater world and the people they share the world with. My students completed their projects, Barbara and I emailed a LOT, then we had a day at school when we Skyped together, with the help of our wonderful technology departments. Students shared significant things about their community, my students shared their art projects, and we will soon have images of the school in Mexico's projects. It really was an amazing moment. Of course, this kind of thing is becoming fairly normal in this day and age, but it certainly didn't happen in the two room country school house I went to in elementary school where everyone looked alike and had the same cultural interests. I'm very curious to see how this project blossoms and blooms and how the "color wheel spins," so to speak.

 For more information on the project you can go to:  www.tinyurl.com/crazycolorfulcolorwheelproject

Here is a slide show of my student's individual projects, remember they were third graders:



Here is a picture of us Skyping with Mexico: (This pic is coming soon! I have to find them!)

AFRICA: Putting in a Well

Above: This is the primary classroom I taught art and drama in. I have a really strange look on my face, but I was speaking and Nan was translating. I guess I was in deep thought about the next thing I was going to say! That photo was actually taken in the first few minutes I was teaching my first class.  I had a lot of FUN with these students, LOTS! But, when I look at that picture I know what is happening. I was trying to keep my composure as I scanned the crowded room and the conditions of the children.  Below: Just a picture of the children's feet in the classroom while they did their art project. 

Above: 248 children in one room with one teacher! It was pretty busy! And I had Nan, their daily teacher with me!  Below:  Leading some motion songs out under a shade tree. That's Pastor Paul, the head of the school, in the picture. He was ALWAYS busy, but he came over to see what we were doing under the shade tree. 

Below:  Some of the students and me as we walked out of the secondary school building. 

A few years ago when I taught school in Uganda short term at the Nakateete School I was invited to a nearby home (a tiny mud brick hut) by a group of men whom I guess I assumed were leaders in the village or at least concerned citizens. Their "grandmother" had died and for some reason that was tied to their concern for water. Perhaps they had struggled to have enough water for her or perhaps she passed away from poor water. I don't know. They asked me to help them get some water in their school or village through a translator. It has haunted me for a couple of years and I have known that somehow, someway I would eventually do something to figure out how to do that. I have thought about it numerous times a day. The last several years I have shared much about my trip to Africa with my students. One of my students even won an international art contest this past school year with her painting of people in Africa getting a water well. So, I was thrilled when our Recycling Club at my school decided to raise funds for a well in Uganda, partnering with Holden Uganda Foundation. It took a little effort and a little detective work, but Pastor Paul, the headmaster of the school who doesn't even get one day off a year must be rejoicing, as well as all the kids. We raised enough money to put a well at the school with a couple of exterior pipes. And, it looks like next year we will have an opportunity, if all is approved, to raise funds to put a water well in the village of Nakateete. I just cannot tell you how happy this makes me. I have these photos and visions of small children, tiny ones maybe ages 4, 5 and six, walking the dirt path roads with big yellow jugs going for water. It's just not safe as many of them have to walk all day long to the water source and back. It's a long journey for a little one.  And it seems to be the small children's jobs. This is what teaching is all about. Sometimes we just plant the seeds that will grow and mature many years on down the road and sometimes we are just lucky enough to see it happen right before our eyes! You can read more about Holden Uganda Foundation at: 

http://holdenuganda.org

Above: I took this picture of some of the children doing their daily LONG walk for water. We were told they walked seven miles to a lake. 

CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA:

Here are a few pictures of my Art Inspired by Central and South America Unit.  These images represent art my students did as a result of my trip with the National Art Education Association to Cuba. They also represent art inspired by Columbia, Peru, and Mexico. Enjoy!

GLOBAL: Tiny Box Collection

     About ten years ago I started collecting tiny boxes. I'm not sure exactly why. I was drawn to their size when traveling; they were easy to get home. I was drawn to their color and design; bright colors and trinkets always catch my eyes. I was drawn to their craftmanship. And I was also drawn to their stories. They each had a story when I bought them or when they were given to me as a gift. (My family and friends now bring me tiny boxes when they go somewhere, too.)  They each also gained a new story when they became mine. In so many ways,  my tiny box collection is so representative of my life, of teaching,  of the future. The stories of our life, while they may seem tiny, when woven together become a large, beautiful tapestry. The fibers of our lives are woven together making the tapestry have even more meaning. 

     I have boxes from Alaska, Mexico, Ecuador, Jamacia, England, Italy, Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, Hawaii, Grand Cayman, Fanning Island, Denmark, Russia, Switzerland, Vatican City, The Netherlands, Germany, the Bahamas, Turks & Caicos, Columbia, Nicaragua, and more exotic places like main street in Lawrence, Kansas (a beautiful hand made wood box by a local woodworker), San Antonio, TX,  Florida, and quite a few other places. And, they all sit in my living room on a very special Ralli Quilt made by my friends Surrendar and Naina from Pakistan. 

     The important thing about the boxes isn't that I have them, or what they look like, but the story behind them. The relationships that developed between myself and friends I made where I was when I purchased them, or where my family or friends were and the relationships they made while they were where they purchased the tiny box for me. They remind me of important friendships. These tiny boxes are near and dear to my heart. When I started collecting them ten years ago I never had any idea how much they would eventually mean to me. While they are each beautiful pieces of art, they are symbolic of that ever so important human connection we must have in this life. 

"We don't accomplish anything in this world alone . . . and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one's life and all the weaving of individual threads that form one to another that create something."-Sandra Day O'Connor

AFRICA: Art Inspired by Africa Unit

After I went to Uganda and Kenya on a mission trip I came home INSPIRED to do an art unit based on art inspired by Africa. Here are a few photos of the finished pieces of art:

GLOBAL: One Million Bones installation on the National Mall in Washington D.C.

      This past April I had the GREAT PRIVILEGE of being the host at NAEA's (National Art Education Association) National Convention for keynote speaker Naomi Natalie of One Million Bones and Sabrina Beckwith of the Bezos Foundation.  I have to thank my friend and colleague, Nancy Walkup, for that opportunity because it was truly an honor to meet these ladies and spend quality time with them at the convention which included helping them with a two hour hands on workshop, taking them to the airport, out to dinner, and so on. I'd been hearing about the One Million Bones project from Nancy for a few months, but learned so much more about it. I'm so in awe of Naomi Natalie and the One Million Bones Project. This young woman and artist decided that she needed to make a difference in the atrocities being committed in parts of the world after she visited one of these regions in Africa. The One Million Bones installation included laying over one million bones on the National Mall in Washington D.C. on June 8th. School students, community groups, and people all over the world made the clay and paper mache bones, a giant feat of gathering them occurred, and then an even larger feat of laying them on the National Mall happened on June 8th. Naomi is a shining example of a young person who saw something terrible happening in our world and not walking away from it....she did something about it. The seed that was planted will last for a long time and extends to the far corners of the earth. Places like the Sudan, Congo, Syria, Somalia, and Burma are places where the women, children, and men that live there just don't get the peace that many of us get to have in our day...and our nights. The One Million Bones installation specifically called attention to the genocide happening in our world. If it weren't for my knee surgery needing to be the day school got out for me, I would have been there. But, it warmed my heart to watch a young woman that I respect and admire so much do something BIG, BIG, BIG, BIG to try to make a difference. God bless Naomi Natale! 

LOCAL: My front porch!

     We ALL know the world is changing so very much due to technology and the advent of globalization. Artists and art teachers the world over see the benefits of using technology in what we do and many are on the front lines of creating some of that technology, but likewise, we as artists and art teachers love that tactile, gooey, messy, manipulative, molding, shaping, and spreading of media to achieve artistic greatness! (Well, ok, at least greatness to us! Everyone may not think it is greatness!) The real challenge that awaits artists and art teachers is how technology is going to change what we do and I just really don't think we have even touched the tip of the iceberg on that! But, again, Michelangelo created The David with his bare hands, a piece of stone, a chisel and some water. Artists are amazing people who can do amazing things because it comes out of their hearts!
     One of my favorite quotes addresses this quandary that exists between art and technology. "The hand of the artist. That's one of the things that may keep us alive spiritually, before the computer and the machine do us in entirely." -Allan Stone  There is a photo of this quote on the slide show on this post. I did the quote as part of a college calligraphy class about 30 years ago and keep it near me, actually in my classroom. Another thing that continually amazes me is how easily artists can use technology and software applications; it just came pretty naturally for me. I think partly that is because it had to have been designed by some creative people somewhere along the line, but also because as artists we get systems and sequence and logical order and we are experts at putting things together. I really truly enjoy using desktop publishing programs, Photoshop, the many fun apps that let you change and alter images, and so on. Yes, I'm an artist that is intrigued with technology and how I can use it in my art classes and am very excited about some iPad apps and so on. But, I'm also an artist that will never quit using that gooey paint and moving it around the paper or canvas or will never quit molding and shaping something with my hands. That's the heart of art and I hope it never changes.
     This morning I was sitting out on my front porch having a cup of coffee and recovering from knee replacement surgery. My front porch is always a "canvas" for me, waiting to be reborn in the spring after a long winter and in the fall once the summer flowers have faded. We have a large backyard and big patio out back, but my front porch is my little Garden of Eden. It's where I go to relax, just breath, think, and let my eyes be comforted by the color and beauty that surrounds me on the porch. Thinking is a big part of being an artist as well....and an art teacher.
     Another one of my favorite quotes is, "The artist's world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep." -Paul Strand  THIS IS SO TRUE!