Testimonies, Art, and Printing...Oh My!
January always makes us think about renewal, fresh starts, and setting goals. Since the beginning of this month, I have been working on a project with my class thinking about just those things. What do we want to work on to improve ourselves in the coming months? How can we be better people?
Last year at about this time, I started thinking about how we could think about these questions in a different way that might be more meaningful to the students. I teach at a Quaker school and we have big testimonies that we think about together: Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, Stewardship. But those aren't the only testimonies. One teacher in our school began teaching the students about personal testimonies. A testimony is a calling, not a choosing; a public act; reflective of shared values of our community; pushes outside our comfort zones; love. You can read more about testimonies from my colleague, Denise Coffin, here.
As always, I wanted to find a way to attach this work to art.
One of my favorite pieces of art is Monkeys Grasp for the Moon by Xu Bing which is on display at the Freer|Sackler Galleries in DC. When I was a fellow there, I found myself visiting that sculpture almost daily, appreciating the simplicity of the design and the powerful message that it sent. This was the piece that would be the inspiration for our own personal testimony art.
The class visited the Freer|Sackler and first studied what we saw. Sitting at the reflecting pool at the bottom and looking up, the children saw lots of geometric shapes at first. Then someone spotted the word "Mono"and we took off from there. Xu Bing, the contemporary artist who created this piece, often plays with words and language in his work. You can read more about his work here. The interviews with him are especially interesting, talking about his background and why he used so many languages in Monkeys Grasp for the Moon. One thing that struck me in an interview was when he talks about how the use of this particular story and multiple languages is a way to show how we can all help each other no matter where we are from. Returning to school from the trip, many students reflected on what they saw and learned in their painted Reflection Journals.
The next step was to have Denise come in and work with the class on a class testimony. What was something that we all thought we could work on? What might push us to be better people and strengthen our class community? Denise guided the students to think about this as a class. We came up with an initial list of Kindness, Honesty, Friendship, Respect, and Listen. After several more discussions, the class decided on Listen as a class testimony. During this process, we also discussed how we each needed to think of our own personal testimony. What was something that we each needed to work on? Each student made a list of several words/ideas and then decided on one.
At the same time, we were learning a little more about Xu Bing through an artist study. He does a lot of work with word art, which was especially appealing to first graders. We looked again at pictures of Monkeys Grasp for the Moon. Then I introduced the book "Look! What do you See?" It's a puzzle book of Chinese and American songs. When you initially view the pages, it appears that the book is written in Chinese characters, however, upon closer inspection (and by reading the book jacket!) you can see that the book is written in code. Once you "crack the code" you can read the whole book. We looked at one song together, cracked the code, and the class almost exploded with joy! We looked at how Xu Bing took an ordinary word and made it beautiful.
Finally, the students took the word for their personal testimony and, using only the letters in the word, made it beautiful. I told them that we were going to 3D print the words and make a sculpture in our classroom that was inspired by Xu Bing's work. Using TinkerCad, I copied the student's work, and then we used the school 3D printer to make the final product. The first graders had to wait about 2 weeks for all of the words to print out, but it was worth it!
We are going to show them their words tomorrow and then install the artwork in our classroom. As soon as that is done, I will add a picture here so you can see the final product!
After the students had a chance to take a look at their word printed out, they reflected on it in their painted reflection journals. This student's word was honesty. I asked him to explain his thinking behind his art. He said, "Honesty makes people happy. And happiness is lots of colors all mushed together." I'm still smiling thinking about this!
It took a lot of thinking, discussing, experimenting, and tweaking to get all of the parts of this exploration into place. It was such an exciting and meaningful project for us as a class community and I am hopeful that seeing our words each day will reinforce the children's commitment to work a little bit each day on their personal and class testimonies!
Take a look at this post to see the final installation.
Last year at about this time, I started thinking about how we could think about these questions in a different way that might be more meaningful to the students. I teach at a Quaker school and we have big testimonies that we think about together: Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, Stewardship. But those aren't the only testimonies. One teacher in our school began teaching the students about personal testimonies. A testimony is a calling, not a choosing; a public act; reflective of shared values of our community; pushes outside our comfort zones; love. You can read more about testimonies from my colleague, Denise Coffin, here.
Artwork by Denise Coffin
As always, I wanted to find a way to attach this work to art.
One of my favorite pieces of art is Monkeys Grasp for the Moon by Xu Bing which is on display at the Freer|Sackler Galleries in DC. When I was a fellow there, I found myself visiting that sculpture almost daily, appreciating the simplicity of the design and the powerful message that it sent. This was the piece that would be the inspiration for our own personal testimony art.
The class visited the Freer|Sackler and first studied what we saw. Sitting at the reflecting pool at the bottom and looking up, the children saw lots of geometric shapes at first. Then someone spotted the word "Mono"and we took off from there. Xu Bing, the contemporary artist who created this piece, often plays with words and language in his work. You can read more about his work here. The interviews with him are especially interesting, talking about his background and why he used so many languages in Monkeys Grasp for the Moon. One thing that struck me in an interview was when he talks about how the use of this particular story and multiple languages is a way to show how we can all help each other no matter where we are from. Returning to school from the trip, many students reflected on what they saw and learned in their painted Reflection Journals.
The next step was to have Denise come in and work with the class on a class testimony. What was something that we all thought we could work on? What might push us to be better people and strengthen our class community? Denise guided the students to think about this as a class. We came up with an initial list of Kindness, Honesty, Friendship, Respect, and Listen. After several more discussions, the class decided on Listen as a class testimony. During this process, we also discussed how we each needed to think of our own personal testimony. What was something that we each needed to work on? Each student made a list of several words/ideas and then decided on one.
At the same time, we were learning a little more about Xu Bing through an artist study. He does a lot of work with word art, which was especially appealing to first graders. We looked again at pictures of Monkeys Grasp for the Moon. Then I introduced the book "Look! What do you See?" It's a puzzle book of Chinese and American songs. When you initially view the pages, it appears that the book is written in Chinese characters, however, upon closer inspection (and by reading the book jacket!) you can see that the book is written in code. Once you "crack the code" you can read the whole book. We looked at one song together, cracked the code, and the class almost exploded with joy! We looked at how Xu Bing took an ordinary word and made it beautiful.
Finally, the students took the word for their personal testimony and, using only the letters in the word, made it beautiful. I told them that we were going to 3D print the words and make a sculpture in our classroom that was inspired by Xu Bing's work. Using TinkerCad, I copied the student's work, and then we used the school 3D printer to make the final product. The first graders had to wait about 2 weeks for all of the words to print out, but it was worth it!
We are going to show them their words tomorrow and then install the artwork in our classroom. As soon as that is done, I will add a picture here so you can see the final product!
After the students had a chance to take a look at their word printed out, they reflected on it in their painted reflection journals. This student's word was honesty. I asked him to explain his thinking behind his art. He said, "Honesty makes people happy. And happiness is lots of colors all mushed together." I'm still smiling thinking about this!
It took a lot of thinking, discussing, experimenting, and tweaking to get all of the parts of this exploration into place. It was such an exciting and meaningful project for us as a class community and I am hopeful that seeing our words each day will reinforce the children's commitment to work a little bit each day on their personal and class testimonies!
Take a look at this post to see the final installation.
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