SPHERE

(2010)

For the summer of 2010 I was the 4th and 5th grade visual arts teacher at SPHERE, an intensive elementary summer school program in Hartford, CT for kids who were not mandated to go to summer school, but needed additional support—largely due to behavioral and attention disorders and/or difficult things happening at home.

In previous years, art had been treated as a break in their class schedule to make crafts, which I saw as a wasted opportunity (as well as patronizing), so I wrote an entirely new curriculum that focused on creative problem solving and self-reflection, while also introducing important art techniques, theories, movements, and contemporary artists.

I found that the students were super engaged, and we rarely had issues, even when staff expressed that specific students had been struggling in their other classes that day—which I attribute to the intentionality in structuring this course to be fun and meaningful, and also to treating young folks as autonomous human beings who have varied needs, complex lives, and know when they’re being spoken down to.

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This part of my website is under construction! Images and more info coming soon.