It's a sunny day and New Buffalo students are painting in the courtyard during Art class... nope, they are in their World History class! Early last year I was in conversations with my colleague Kurt Raducha who teaches World History about some ideas that he had to collaborate on. Mr. Raducha loves hands-on learning and has been including artistic projects in his curriculum all along like building medieval shields out of cardboard and designing fashion from past time periods.
Over the 2021-2022 school year, we have been in collaboration to incorporate art-making into the World History classes with different types of art for specific history units. Students studied the Renaissance, Impressionism, West African Appliqué Art, and Ancient Greek and Roman busts. Raducha covers the history and I prepare the art-making tutorials with portable art materials so that he can teach the art lessons with his history classes. It has been exciting to work together on these projects throughout the year.
Ancient Rome/Greece: Making busts from air-dry clay
The Renaissance: Painting a Still Life
First World War: Claude Monet's Impressionist Water Lilies
Mr. Raducha's growing classroom art gallery:
West Africa: Appliqué Textiles - using cut paper collage to tell a story
(Middle School World History students begin their appliqué collages in the next couple weeks)
Mayan/Aztez: Printing styrofoam stamps of glyphs and symbols (Upcoming Art & World History Collaboration!)
I am grateful to Kurt for reaching out to include art-making in his World History classes. It has been an exciting collaboration to adapt art projects into a streamlined process to be more accessible in other classes. To see the students smiling and thinking creativity in a core curriculum subject, it brings the history lessons to life by applying modern artistic techniques to ancient traditions. Who doesn't love painting water lilies during class in the courtyard on a beautiful afternoon?
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