Artists: Past and Future

Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.

My Students

"The world is but a canvas to our imagination"-- Henry David Thoreau. My students are expressive and creative individuals who absolutely love art. Unfortunately, we lack resources. Art is not a prioritized content-area in our district, and this is very much reflected in its lack of funding.

I have an amazing group of twenty-eight fourth graders.

They are enthusiastic learners and creative thinkers. They enjoy being in school and possess an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Although they enjoy every single subject, Art seems to have a special place in their hearts. My students attend a Title I school, in which all students qualify for the Free Lunch Program. Many of them reside in government funded housing programs in the inner city. Although we are fortunate enough to be provided with basic resources and school supplies for our classroom, we are in desperate need of additional resources for the arts.

My Project

The collection of "Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artist" by Mike Venezia and Laurence Anholt's Artist Books for children would be a tremendous resource for our classroom. Due to district mandated pacing plans in the core subject areas, it has been a struggle for most classrooms to include art in elementary education. Our class makes every effort to incorporate art within all subject areas. We have used Picasso's Cubism style in creating our self portraits to go along with our autobiographies. We have also studied and explored Van Gogh's artwork, which provided us with ideas in our "Parts of a Flower" poster for science. With these books in our classroom library, my students will have immediate access and be able to utilize them in a variety of ways. They can do artist biographies while in their small group rotations. They can also compare and contrast varying art styles. They will be able to identify which artist would be best suited as a guide for their next project.

The collections of art books will make a world of difference for the students in my class.

It can serve as a resource across all subject areas. We can use it for writing biographies, responses to literature, descriptive writing, math graphic designs and patterns, ideas for science illustrations and social studies projects. With the generosity of foundations like the Lily Sarah Grace Fund and donors such as yourselves, my class will be able to continue integrating art across all subject areas.