Advocacy: Collaboration, Pride, and Community

Creating lessons in which students work with their community to showcase their art creates pride. Students take ownership of their learning, learn to collaborate with others, and most importantly, create a sense of belonging.

Lauren is an educator at Homer Junior High School, and Heather teaches at Herkimer Junior and Senior High School. Our districts are more than an hour’s drive apart, but we often bounce ideas off each other and share how we collaborate with our local and school communities to create that sense of pride among our students. The following projects are some of our favorites:

Coffee Sleeves (Local Project)
Lauren: This project started with an idea from my art teacher friend and artist, Molly Reagan (@goodneighborart). The idea was to have schools in our county partner with Coffeemania, a local coffee shop that has been giving back to our community for years, and who provided hundreds of blank coffee sleeves to our school.

In class, I talked about what customers might want to see on the sleeves. Positive messages, humor, themes about coffee, drinks, and morning caffeine were all discussed. Students brainstormed and created thumbnail designs of what they wanted to paint or draw on the sleeves. Acrylic paint and permanent markers worked best on this material.

The coffee shop came up with the idea to distribute the sleeves on January 30, dubbing it “Inspire Your Heart with Art” day. Students at all levels had the opportunity to share positive messages with their artwork while benefiting a valued local business. This was a win-win project idea that could be adapted to any location.

Heather: This was such a great lesson and idea for collaborating with the local community. I also created coffee sleeves with my students. The local coffee shop handed us a box of one hundred sleeves. It took us weeks to design and create them and only two days to use all of the sleeves.

Clay Village (In-School Project)
Lauren: The Homer district is a rural community with many local businesses. Starting as a way to beautify Homer Junior High School, this installation evolved into the creation of a model village much like the one our students live in. Students began with generic homes and expanded their designs to include places in their neighborhood.

The pieces were built with slabs and a variety of glazes. All were glued directly to the wall with E6000 (industrial-strength glue). Above the houses and buildings we added small sculptures created by seventh-graders, who were asked to imagine what might be in the sky. A hot air balloon? A taco? Why not? Each sculpture had a hole in the back and was glued to a pre-drilled screw in the wall.

Humans of Herkimer
Heather: This lesson started with an idea to have a spin-off of the Humans of New York, a series of photos and stories of real people and their lives. Humans of New York aims to capture the diversity of New York City residents, showcasing their individual experiences and perspectives. The Humans of Herkimer also focuses on real people—the people of Herkimer Junior and Senior High School.

Students learned about photography and tips and tricks on capturing a good photo. We also had many discussions about who we are, how we depict ourselves, and how we can depict others through just one photograph. Students were then tasked with photographing students and staff members within the school building.

There was one catch: students needed to showcase who that person was without showing their face. Students captured the PE teacher with a basketball, the technology coordinator with his heated coffee mug and Apple watch, a student playing the guitar, and even me, the art teacher, wearing my favorite smock with paint all over my hands.

These images were so powerful, we decided that they had to be put on display. Students came up with the design plans and proposed them to the administration. We had the photographs printed on metal tins, which we arranged on the the wall in the main lobby of the school. We called the exhibit Humans of Herkimer and displayed the title on the wall above the work.

We have added images throughout the years, and we’re now showing more than twenty images of teachers, students, and even our school SRO. The Humans of Herkimer is the first thing you see when you walk into Herkimer High School, and itʼs definitely a great way to showcase our amazing school and demonstrate how we feel about it.

Conclusions
Pride is shown all over our community. Ironically, both of our schools use pride in our school slogan: #Herkpride #Bluepride. We are happy to feel pride around us every day!