The following was written on the whiteboard, prior to the start of class:
Josh framed the lesson, noting this class, as previous classes, was grounded in the premise that art tells a story. He asked students to recall what they'd done in previous classes:
- Last class: how perspectives change a story, using "Cinderella" as an example
- 2 classes ago: Watched "Adaptation"
- 3 classes ago: Stenciled picnic tables and studied street art
Projecting a painting on the board for a minute, Josh instructed students to "remember as many details as you can":
Students subsequently took a 20 question, true/false exam on the details of the painting, then reviewed the correct answers. No students had a photographic memory, though apparently the other A&L large-group had one student who correctly answered all 20 questions. The quiz is below:
Josh then asked, "How does memory help you?" Students chorused back, "Tests." Josh posed additional questions to the students: "How might memory help you as a writer? An artist?", and suggested that a journalist might benefit from having a good memory in order to document facts.
Contextualizing the painting, Josh informed the students that they'd viewed other samples of this artist's work before: twice. He then asked students about their perceived narrative of the painting. Students offered various answers: "An earthquake--that's a scientist observing the ground." Josh questioned the class as to whom the girl in the car might be, pointing out details: her clothes, her hand on the gear shift, the fact that the car was a vintage Jaguar. He explained that the painting was inspired by the New Testament story of Doubting Thomas, where Thomas felt the wounds of the resurrected Christ, an action paralleled by the man in the painting reaching out to touch the crack in the road. No surprise, students didn't get that Biblical reference, but I reminded them that Chaplain Scott had shown a video clip of the story some weeks before for Easter chapel, and indeed, they made the connection. Alison commented that although the Bible story is rather pejorative in its treatment of faithless people, in Arts and Letters, teachers want students to be Doubting Thomases, in the sense that they should be critical thinkers who question.
Next, Alison introduced a classic group memory game, "I'm going on a trip, and I'm taking...", and all three teachers modeled the activity. Each of the three student tables then played the game.
Two of the tables played the game conventionally, with each person simply adding objects to the collective listing, but one table started spontaneously creating its own variation of the game, with each person contributing a phrase in a narrative, rather than objects e.g. "I'm going on a trip, and I'm going to take my suitcase, water bottle, and sensible shoes, so I can learn about rocks and trees, and fall down waterfalls, yet live, and return home safely to my family and friends..." Interestingly enough, confirming research on memory, the group that constructed the narrative did a great job accurately remembering the story, despite having more information to retain. When the activity concluded, Josh noted that most people, on average, only remember 5-9 things. Nora and Alison asked the class what strategies helped them to remember the listing of items, and students mentioned various things, e.g. having a story/narrative to connect the items, assigning particular items to specific people.
Then Josh showed a piece created by a professional artist: a booklet entitled "Drawn to Remember." The photographer artist who'd created "Drawn to Remember" had hired a police sketch artist to create portraits of people, based on reports given by various individuals asked to describe those people, including family members, friends, co-workers, and casual acquaintances. Josh flipped through the various samples, and students were invited to reflect on what they observed in the various sketches. It was intriguing to see what features figured prominently in sketches, as well as how different the portraits could be, as they were based on verbal descriptions which could be quite variable. Josh explained that the describers had been asked to mention the state of the person the last time the observer had seen him/her, and also provided further information as to how police sketch artists work--that they show a binder of various physical features, e.g. eyes, to informants and ask them to identify the one that's closest to what they remember, then flesh out the portrait from there, extrapolating based on the description given.
Nora wrote the assignment title, "Childhood Landscape Drawing," on the whiteboard, seguing into a drawing activity.
After taking sheets of newsprint and fistfuls of crayons, students received 15 minutes to draw. They were to flash back to themselves as first graders--six year olds-- and draw a landscape as if they were that age. A student asked whether she should use the full sheet, and Josh responded that she should if she did when she was six. Students seemed tremendously engaged in the activity, laughing and occasionally chatting, as they sketched cool, smiling suns sporting Ray-Bans, cotton-puff clouds, two-story houses with 2 four-panel windows, and a front door with a doorknob, and triangular mountains.
After completing their landscapes, the class took a gallery walk, circulating around the different tables to examine each other's sketches. Nora called upon students to contribute commonalities, sketching their observations on the whiteboard: rainbows flanked by clouds, "m" or "v"birds, corner suns, flower stems with 2 leaves, surrounded by three grass blades.
The class shared a chuckle, struck by the fact that these landscapes reflected fantasy, rather than reality, depicting phenomena rarely seen in Hawai`i, like trees with hollows, apple trees, smoking chimneys. Teachers closed the activity by highlighting its intent: recalling how fun drawing was as a child and remembering the symbolic landscape. Students folded their drawings in half, and placed them in their Commonplace Books.
Next, Nora introduced the writing activity by reading an excerpt from p. 47 of Susan Shaughnessy's Walking on Alligators: A Book of Meditations for Writers, while Alison circulated around the room, passing out slips of paper to students.
The writing assignment was a Commonplace Book journal entry on memories. Nora framed the assignment via a discussion. She started by asking students to recall their first memories and how old they were. She suggested that language provides a framework for memory, and shared a story about her brother, who emigrated to the U.S. when he was 9. When Nora asked him if he could remember anything from his childhood in Korea, her brother said no--apparently the memories were encoded in Korean, rather than English. Nora then raised an intriguing thought: that some people say we can remember things pre-language development, and a student shared a story about her friend, who supposedly could remember being in the womb. Nora commented that it's often hard to distinguish what is authentically one's own memory, that often our memories are constructed via photos, other people's stories, and outside influences: borders are blurry. She asked students to jot down as many details as they could about their first memory: who were they with? What were the sights, sounds, smells, and emotions, and encouraged them to be vivid and detailed in their description of the time and place of that event.
She gave them a few minutes to record their thoughts, then proceeded on to a second prompt, noting that students were welcome to continue their first thought later. Prompt #2 was "the first day of school," however far back that memory stretched. Nora suggested possible details to include: first friends, one's shoes and clothes, the teacher's name, what one liked to play. Finally, both Nora and Alison introduced Prompt #3: creating a list of other "firsts" in a minute: first kiss, first tooth lost, first sleepover, first bully, first bike ride. After the minute was up, each student selected one item from their list, jotted it on their slip of paper, and gave it to the teachers. The teachers then distributed the slips randomly, so each student got a classmate's slip; that other person's "first" served as a fourth writing trigger for students. The response was to be recorded again in their Commonplace Books. Alison noted that if the "first" didn't exactly correspond to one's own experience, that students were able to modify the prompt, e.g. "first punch" could be transformed into "the first time I was hurt."
I found the lesson truly inspiring: creative, focused, engaging, and beautifully framed, not to mention smoothly executed: a great example of how visual art and writing serve as tools for expression and critical thought, helping inform and enhance understanding.
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