Remembering to Promote Awareness

Where do my students go next? I am contemplating a larger school wide project next year but also involving the parental community next. My heart goes out to world hunger. I have my share of cafeteria duty and aware of the ones who do not have money for food. I am also aware of the food banks' greatest need for food is in January after the holidays. The Empty Bowls Project is an awareness I feel would greatly serve my students in my quest to bring meaning to their art making. I have much to learn myself and more research is to be done. What will meaning look like in the future? Will remembrance be more important than ever in our future? How will visual art make a difference?

Remembering for Meaning- The Poppy

Students created 931 poppies to remember men and women of our community who serve and who have served in our nation's military. Students discovered how art can bring a community together and also to create a piece that had meaning. The video is much longer in length, I edited it to focus on what one little girl said about how art can bring a community together and heal. I had asked her the question, How can art bring a community together?" and gave her a moment to reflect before I began the recording.  Her answer was all her own. She had me thinking later.. this was what I was looking for in my teaching: MEANING

Earnest Boyer's Human Commonalities

Boyer's Human Commonalities are not new to the education field. They are not new to me either. As I gain experience as a teacher and as Pinterest takes over the elementary art room, more than ever I find these ten items have more meaning to me as a teacher. I fear they will become lost somehow. I question will these commonalities stay the same or will a new list better fit the students of our future?

1.) The Life Cycle (all humans experience birth, growth, and death)

2.) Language (all humans use symbols to express their thoughts, feelings, and       emotions)

3.) The Arts (various art forms serve as a universal language)

4.) History (all humans, at some point, recall the past and look to the future)

5.) Groups/Institutions (all humans belong in some way)

6.) Work (all humans make a living in some way)

7.) Search for Meaning (all humans, in their own personal way, ponder the larger purpose of life)

8.) The Natural World (all humans are connected to the ecology of the earth)

VIII.   SEARCH FOR MEANING

               This leads finally to the universal experience that is most crucial. The simple truth is that all of us, regardless of our unique heritage or tradition, are searching for a larger purpose. We all seek to give meaning to our lives.

               Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that man cannot be whole unless he be committed, that he cannot find himself unless he find a purpose beyond himself.  And this is true for all people on the planet. WE can suppress this hunger to know what life is all about. We can find endless distractions from the serious reflection required by the human search for meaning.  But deep down inside we still feel this need to know who we are and where we fit.

               What is the meaning of our existence?  What is the Divine Plan for my life?

The poet Vachel Lindsay wrote:  

It is the world’s one crime its babes grow dull  

Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap  

Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve

Not that they die but they die like sheep

               The tragedy of life is not death.  The tragedy is to die with commitments undefined, with convictions undeclared, and with service unfulfilled.  All of us want to feel that life as a larger purpose.  And it’s my own conviction that the search for meaning will lead us first to God, and  then lead us to a life of service, as we reach out to others. ( Boyer, 1993 )

Remembering Raises Awareness

What Would You Do?

by Emtithal Mahmoud

What would you do if

your town was bombed

And everything near it was gone?

What would you do if

you were cold and alone,

And cast to the streets without a home?

What would you do if

someone killed your mom and dad?

And you had lost everything you had?

What would you do if

you were shattered and broken

Because you have witnessed

the unspoken?

If you run, where would you go?

If you died, would anyone know?

I myself would pray

And hope for a better day.

 I am looking to raise social awareness in my classroom. Turning my students minds globally. 

Remembering Bonds Communities

Elementary Students participated in a school wide art project creating poppies to represent those who have served in our nation's military. Each student created their own clay poppy to be part of a large installation of poppies on Veteran's Day. Students watched a video about the Tower of London Poppies and discussions of community art, art for remembrance, and creating art as a narrative. 

Finding meaning in remembering

As a teacher, I have become to value teaching reverence, memories, honoring, and remembering. Actually most of my teaching over the years has been teaching the importance of artists, cultures, peoples, traditions and the value of them. Teaching meaning through art has been my mantra. More importantly, as generations change, what is meaningful to them. Is it important to remember? but really is remembrance important to today and in our future? How do we as artists show the value of remembering?

Esther Nisenthal Krinitz:

Inspired by the art and story of Holocaust survivor Esther Nisenthal Krinitz, Art and Remembrance uses art and personal narrative to recognize individual courage and resilience, and to foster understanding and compassion for those who experience injustice.

Events to Remember

Throughout my teaching career, I have had the opportunity at various times to shape young minds using artistic expression as a way to cope with difficult situations, for example, 911.  It is through these difficult situations and creating that students and the community recover, come together, and inner healing begins to take place. My thoughts and discussions found me pondering, after the initial creative response, a deeper look into the art of remembering. Art is created all over the world in remembrance of events, wars, tragedies, ceremonies, and of people. It is through remembering that we tell the story, pass it on to future generations, and share with other cultures. Young children through the arts can help preserve the memory .... I was inspired by artist Paul Cummins and his installation piece Blood Swept Lands and Sea of Red. A moving installation of nearly 900,000 clay poppies encasing the Tower Of London. Each poppy is to represent a fallen soldier during WWI in England. Each night 200 soldiers names were called with the last name spoken on Veterans Day , 2014.