Students Use Art to Learn Morality
by Andre Clayton
“The Tortoise and the Hare” is the most famous of Aesop’s fables, which uses simple language to teach children the moral lesson that slow and steady wins the race.
Progressive Arts Alliance artist-educator Jen Craun is teaching Charles Lake Elementary preschoolers and kindergartners twelve of Aesop’s fables, including “The Tortoise and the Hare,” through a more colorful technique than just reading their simple language to them. Craun, who is a professional artist, said since March she has been teaching Charles Lake preschoolers and kindergartners printmaking to create the characters of the twelve Aesop’s fables.
According to Craun, Charles Lake preschoolers and kindergarteners have been using stencils, brayers, inks, and a printing press to create the fables’ characters, which will be used as a backdrop for a play performed by older students that will be about the fables they have learned. Three additional PAA arts-educators are teaching other Charles Lake Elementary students music, script writing, and acting for the play, which they will perform in front of their classmates and parents at the end of the program in May.
The preschoolers and kindergartners are not envious of their thespian upperclassmen, according to Craun. “The students enjoy the printmaking because they understand it is a privilege,” Craun said. “I didn’t touch a printing press until I was in college, but thanks to this program preschoolers and kindergarteners are getting to use them now.” Craun said the preschoolers and kindergartners are also getting a chance to learn about colors and enhancing their motor skills.
Craun teaches infrastructure printmaking to special education and first through third grade students. In infrastructure printmaking, the artist makes man-made structures such as roads or buildings. This type of printmaking teaches children non-art skills as well. “The children look at how systems such as bridges, pipes and roads work,” Craun said.
No matter the type of printmaking, all of the students are happy to participate, according to Charles Lake teacher Patricia Hagler-Tucker. “They are proud of the end result of their work since they start out with a plain sheet of paper and turn it into artwork,” she said, while her special education class made their infrastructure art on 24” by 36” pieces of paper.
Craun said she has been teaching printmaking to Charles Lake students for two school years and she always sees student growth. Craun said she makes the students take two printmaking vocabulary tests, the first one during the first week of the program and the second one during the program’s last week. “There is always a 50 to 70 percent increase in knowledge about the discipline,” she said.
Hagler-Tucker said she has already seen improvement in her students. “They seem to show more maturity and responsibility from the class,” she said. “I would recommend the program to a fellow teacher; the kids would get a kick out of it.”
Young Audiences of Northeast Ohio provided funding for this program, as part of the ICARE/Art is Education initiative. PAA designs the curriculum and provides the artists-educators who have been working at Charles Lake since the beginning of the school year. Both nonprofit organizations are making an effort toward providing all Cleveland Metropolitan School District students with experiences in the arts.