Art’s a Frame-Up, and the Kids Love It

Every hand went up in the class of fourth-graders at the Andrew Jackson Elementary School on the north side of Indio. I was the guest of Jean Erck, a teaching docent for the La Quinta Arts League, the volunteer branch of the La Quinta Arts Foundation.

The women who have volunteered to teach the new “Making Friends With Great Works of Art” program all took courses on how to teach children. The idea is not to teach the children to memorize dozens of artists’ names with their most famous works. The aim is to teach them to look at a picture and learn to be comfortable with it.

The day I went, there were 32 kids bubbling with enthusiasm, each one wanting to be called on. Jean asked them questions to see what they remembered from the lesson before. They had full control of words like symmetrical and asymmetrical, and composition and balance.

The week before the students had learned that objects in the front of a picture are painted larger than those toward the back. And they talked about parallel lines. They all agreed that if the lines went on a very long way, they would reach the vanishing point.

On this day, Jean’s partner, Barbara Aplanalp, set up a picture that could be changed. She and Jean had searched their houses to find things that could be moved inside the wooden frame.

She asked two children to hold the frame steady at the front of the class. Aplanalp asked a boy to seat himself “in” the picture and placed an artichoke toward the front of the frame on the desk where the model was seated. Then she placed a clay coyote in front of the model and asked if the picture was symmetrical or not.

No one made a mistake as she moved the articles to different arrangements in the frame.

The delight was not just that the children were learning so much but that they enjoyed it so.

The teacher whose well-behaved class was performing so brightly is Barbara Carney. The principal of the school is Martha Tereen; she is enthusiastic about the art classes.

There are 21 docents working with 50 fourth-grade classes in the Desert Sands Unified School District. In September, the classes will be expanded to encompass the fifth grade and will be taught by double the number of docents.

The children’s creativity is encouraged in other areas as well. Tereen also showed me the Jackson Journal, a book written, illustrated, laid out and assembled by Jackson students. The writing is in English and Spanish.

One of my favorite pieces is by fourth-grader Brynn Tate. “I have a dream that everyone will love and care about the earth. Deep down in my heart I know there is some place in the world that one city, one state, even maybe one person cares about the earth the way I do. I think there aren’t a lot of people that do. I will always remember my dream.”

There is a great deal of worrying about pollution at Jackson School, and the rain forest is a very big item with the children.

The students also write that they worry about people fighting because they are different colors. They think it would be wonderful if no one fought or polluted and if everyone got to see the three-toed sloth hanging upside down in the rain forest. A number of writers think it would be nice to hear a lion roar.

Mike Marohn, a fifth-grader, wrote a poem.

“I am brave and courteous. I wonder what’s going to happen to Saddam. I hear a cat purr. I see the human body. I want perfect health.

“I am brave and courteous. I pretend I’m a cat. I feel good. I touch a cat fur. I worry about the war in the world.

“I am brave and courteous. I understand math. I say no to drugs. I dream about whales. I try to be good. I hope to get rich.

“I am brave and courteous.”

Mike, anyone who understands math and likes whales is halfway there.