Inside Innovative Classrooms

Clarksville Art Room a Place for Creativity — and Leadership and Collaboration
Release Date: Dec. 31, 2009

The art room has always been a place for creativity. Yet, it can also be a place where students can develop leadership, responsibility, collaboration and communications skills, which are other attributes educational leaders have said students will need to compete in the future.

The emphasis on such skills in today’s schools caused Clarksville art teacher Kathleen Buckley to think anew about how her fourth and fifth grade students would approach projects in her class this year.

Instead of working as individuals, sitting through a lesson led by the teacher and then going their separate ways to work on a project, students now work in art teams. Students rotate through various roles: team leader, an art foreman, and creative crew.

“I think kids are always better directed when it’s a friend or a classmate,” Mrs. Buckley said. “I’m still there, I’m still modeling for them, I’m still directing them. But, I’m giving them a lot more leadership opportunities. They can collaborate a lot more.”

As the team concept gained momentum in the early part of this year, student groups cycled through various stations, completing “one-week projects” centered on shapes and lines, an artist study, and cartoons.

On a Tuesday in November, students entered the art room and immediately gathered at tables with their teammates. Mrs. Buckley provided some brief directions and set the teams in motion. The art foremen left their seats and gathered the supplies as the team leader and creative crew waited to get to work.

At one table, the assignment was a study of German expressionist Paul Klee. Team leader Alex Goldberg oriented students to the assignment — read a book about Klee create something in his style — and students took turns reading the book and discussing what they were doing.

When it came time to begin their own work, students alternated between exchanging ideas and brief periods of quiet where they worked intently.

Students said working in teams helps spur creativity.

“Usually we share ideas in the middle,” Riley Stevens said. “At the beginning, we have a lot of ideas, but by the middle we have run out. So it helps a lot.”

“It’s fun because you can feed off of each other’s ideas,” added Alex Goldberg.

Mrs. Buckley said that she plans to continue with the team concept into the future, possibly adding a technological element such as a digital photography station or a virtual trip to Paris on the laptop computer.