Tiny Boxes

  

(This Blog post was migrated here from another Blog I maintained.)  

 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 craftsmanship. 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: 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!)