PAA Program Changes Student’s Definition of Fun
by Andre Clayton
After George Washington Carver Elementary School third grade teacher Susan O’Donnell worked with Progressive Arts Alliance (PAA) for the first time this year, she said she got more than she expected when one of her students began a geometry project at home just for fun.
PAA has been providing schools both in and outside the Cleveland Metropolitan School District with arts-in-education programming since 2002, striving to give students meaningful experiences in the contemporary arts that stimulate critical thinking and promote progressive thought.
PAA artist-educators worked with O’Donnell’s third grade class for over two months, combining printmaking with her math curriculum and rap with her language arts curriculum.
“It gave my students the opportunity to link creativity with the precision required in math and gave them another avenue to explore language arts,” O’Donnell said. According to O’Donnell, PAA artist-educator Jen Craun taught her students how to use geometry to plot points on paper to create the outlines for their printmaking projects. O’Donnell said her third grade student Eshana Shaw, “applied the mathematic concept of plotting points to make a home project.”
According to Shaw, she began the project at home not for extra credit, but for entertainment. “It was not hard,” she said, noting she used what Craun had taught her to create an outline of a flower. “I remembered what I was taught.”
“[Shaw] has improved academically,” O’Donnell said.
Shaw agreed with O’Donnell. “It [the program] helped me with my school work,” she said.
According to O’Donnell, the PAA rap activity enhanced her students’ memorization, summarization, listening and social skills, which are crucial to success in and out of the classroom.
PAA artist-educator Sister Salima taught O’Donnell’s third grade class how to summarize the seven chaptered children’s book “Nate the Great, San Francisco Detective” to turn it into a rap song. The children worked together to create the song.
“It was fun,” Shaw said. “The hardest part was memorizing the story.”
O’Donnell said she would recommend the PAA program to any teacher. “The program is rewarding.”