At my school we have a program called "Art a la Carte" that is an art
appreciation curriculum taught by volunteer parent docents. They are
supervised by the art teachers and the classroom teachers in that the
curriculum is set or requested by the classroom teachers with specific
intent to compliment the history, foreign language, and even the
language arts curriculum in one middle school grade. The entire program
spans grades 3-8 now, though the bulk of it is in grades 3 through 6.
We are currently writing and researching for a new presentation on
French art/architecture. Usually 3 parent docents work on each
presentation and each take about 10 minutes of the class time for their
part of the presentation. We used to have just one or two parents per
lesson, but this way it is easier for the parents, and if there is a
problem with someone's schedule, the other two can take over totally.
This has made the program more reliable with our commitments. Parents
seem to really enjoy this program as we get tons of volunteers annually.
Last year we added a new unit, "Art As Writing Prompts for Poetry." The
English teachers said that the program raised the calliber of writing in
6th grade tremendously. All of our units are on CD now and we have our
own storage and work room for our docents, which is wonderful. We have
a really intelligent parent population, many with strong humanities
base. It's wonderful to let our parents take such a part in our school.
All of the teachers appreciate the TONS of hours of research that they
put into enriching our existing curriculum. It was a labor of love
getting the program started 15 years ago. THe program has evolved and
strengthened as time went by. We have a one day training session for
all docents in the fall. In this session, questioning and discussion
strategies are presented, sample lessons are presented for newcomers, a
notebook with procedure for lesson prep and presentation is covered, and
parents sign up for the lessons that they are most interested in. We
have two parent heads and two team captains per grade level who oversee
the program but report to the art teachers with any difficulties or
whatever. The program practically runs itself now once the recruiting
and training periods are over. The other art teacher and I split the
grades between us so that we pop into at least one lesson per
presentation to help out or at least make sure that things are going
smoothly. Third grade has the most lessons. THey spend the year
studying sculpture from Egyptian to modern with about 10 units and a
field trip to Houston's outdoor sculpture. Fourth Grade studies art up
to the Civil war in the Americas. Fifth grade covers ancient
civilizations, and Sixth presents a language arts unit, a Spanish unit,
Hudson School, Westward Expansion, Precolumbian, and a unit on African
American Slave Crafts. Seventh does not participate in the program yet.
Eighth grade is where the new unit on French art/architecture is being
presented.
Linda
Linda Woods
Visit our student's web art gallery at St.John's School
www.sjs.org
click on "Stories of SJS," click on "Arts Stories," click on Linda
Woods' name. View artwork by Lower, and Middle School students as well
as our art archives.
