Andrea Worthey

Left: Stella, ceramic sculpture grade nine. Right: Daisy, original drawing, grade one.

Being an art teacher can be lonely, especially if you’re the sole person teaching your subject in the entire building. One day at lunch, I was talking to a tech-ed teacher I worked with, and I realized how similar welding and woodworking concepts were to the concepts I was teaching in my art room. We discussed everything from craftsmanship to project management and grading. This lunch experience would open a new world for the rest of my teaching career.

An Answer in Ceramics
I began to look at my classroom projects as more than cross-curricular integrations through cross-referencing content materials; they were also opportunities for true collaboration. I wanted students to create a project, from concept to completion, that would allow them to collaborate in ways they had never done before. But how could we do this authentically without feeling forced and have it naturally align with our curriculum?

I began to look at my classroom projects as more than cross-curricular integrations; they were also opportunities for true collaboration.

The ceramics studio was a natural place for this to happen. In class, students create utilitarian and nonobjective artwork, which can lead to various entry points for almost any subject. The key, of course, is to have a willing co-teacher. I decided it would be wise to start my collaboration with another teacher with one small project. It was kind of a trial run so we could both see if it would be a good fit to work together and expand our working relationship in the future.

Successful Collaborations
We are lucky to have two makerspaces in our school. One we lovingly call “Nerdvana,” and the other is the Lubar Center for Innovation and Exploration. Here, we worked with students and staff to problem-solve and create a signature stamp based on the history of the Chinese chop. The staff at the Lubar Center helped us explore using a laser cutter with wood and 3D-printing the stamps to see what would work best. They worked with us to take our drawings and create the signature stamps that students used on their clay projects for the rest of the semester.

We also collaborated with our outdoor education coordinator, middle-school environmental science teacher, and the middle-school ecological society. Students learned how to propagate plants, design planters for specific plants to thrive and grow, and transplant the plants in their completed planters.

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