Friday, September 19, 2008

first two weeks of school at dilworth

Today marks the two week mark for my new job as the "Art Specialist" at Dilworth Elementary School in SLC. It has been absolutely exhausting and i love it. Being an art teacher is like being Santa Claus. Every single kid loves art, so I'm pretty popular around town. Last week I handed out 500 sketchbooks to every child and we worked on Self- Portraits. In class I introduced myself and told them about how important imagination is. I even got them all to do a short meditation (closing their eyes, focusing upon their breathe, and listening deeply for their own heartbeat) as I told them an East African story I got from Laura Simms about buffalo robes, children turning into buffalo, a hunter, and a baby boy who choses to live with the buffalo. They loved it. I even had a student proclaim "There's a buffalo in my head!" when she opened her eyes again.

This week, we learned about Tibet and prayer flags (Lung-Tu = "wind horse") and talked a lot about peace. We all made our own prayer flags that we will hang in the school next week. The sixth graders made prayer flags that will be included in an installation by local artist Trent Alvey at Neighborhood House in SLC.

I've been wanting to include some photos, but because of liability issues, I can't show any children's faces. So, I took some photos and then cropped them just so. It barely hints at the exciting times we've had in school, but use your imagination.


1 comment:

Chelsea said...

hey I liked your article on KSL!