I teach art at a small elementary school in New York for students with severe disabilities. The students in my school are between four and eleven years old. There are thirteen 6:1:1 classes (6 students, one teacher, and one paraprofessional) and one 12:1:1 class (12 students, one teacher, and one paraprofessional).
Most of the students in my school have Autism Spectrum Disorder, but that doesn't stop them from being amazing and unique artists.
My students really love creating art, exploring new art making materials and showing their work off when it is finished. They thrive in an environment that is well organized and structured.
My Project
Over the past couple of months my students have really gotten into the process of printmaking. We have experimented with marker transfers and foam printing plates. We are in the process of exploring collagraphs which is a printing process that uses collage to create a printing plate and then printing an image from that plate. The printmaking process has been really empowering for my students because they are able to do much of the printing process on their own, however many of my students have found pulling prints from a collagraph plate to be too difficult.
Having a printing press would allow my students to be able to get clean, embossed prints from their collagraph plates.
Collagraph plates require placing a lot of force onto the plate when making a print, but having a press would allow the students to feed their print through a machine which would apply even pressure for them. It would also allow us to explore block printing in the future.
More than half of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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