I have been a parent for over 22 years. Our oldest child started kindergarten in 1990 and we’ve had at least one child in school every year for the past 17 years. Today, for the first time ever, I tried to be part of the Mommy Club.
Until recently, working full time meant I didn’t get to do a lot of school related things. I would take off an hour or so to attend a parent/teacher conference or a mid-day concert or play. Sometimes I would leave work a little early to attend a track meet or some other athletic event. But I’ve never spent the entire morning with one of my children and their classmates. Today, I helped chaperone a field trip to the Spiva Art Gallery’s “In the Company of Outsiders” exhibit. It was quite a revealing experience, that peek into my 3rd grader’s world.
I remember field trips being more about fun than learning when I was a kid. That was definitely not the case with today’s trip. I mean it was fun but they actually had to do work.
First, we listened to a lecture on the artists who were being featured in the exhibit. There were 3 feature artists, all of whom are considered “untrained” artists. The children were then allowed to roam around checking out the different pieces in the exhibit. Most of the children were fascinated by the artwork of Jessie Montes, who creates paintings and sculptures using cardboard. “No touching” was one of the fundamental rules that needed to be reinforced over and over. I can’t blame the kids though. Cardboard art is something that just begs to be touched. Just to make sure it’s really cardboard if for no other reason. I touched some when my group wasn’t looking. Yep - cardboard.
The most popular exhibit in the show was probably a sculpture of Sally Rand. Every single boy in both 3rd grade classes had to check out the rear view of Miss Rand’s scantily clad bottom. I wonder if any of them knew that she was a somewhat renowned bubble and fan dancer in her time? She would probably be happy to know that she can still draw a crowd. Surprisingly, quite a number of the girls also had to have a look. “Nothing to see here, move along” - everything was covered by a tassel. I looked.
Another of the artists, Robert Eugene Smith, paints somewhat cartoonish scenes that are crammed full of all kinds of items - people, animals, cars and what-not. All of his paintings are kind of chaotic life scenes drawn with heavy black outlines and bold, garish colors. The kids did a “hands-on art experience” where they had to create their own object in the same style and add it to the mural being created by all of the 3rd grade classes in Joplin. Once the mural is completed it will go on display in Joplin’s city hall. Violet added our minivan to the clutter of objects on the mural.
After the art project came the most fun part of the day. The kids were divided up into small groups and matched up with a parent or teacher. Then we had to complete these worksheets. This required multiple trips around the exhibit counting different things like How many paintings were done on canvas? How many on mixed media? How many were sculptures? Draw a graph. Draw a graph? Look at Mr. B sneaking that math into an art trip!
My group had been counting out loud and keeping the numbers in our heads - none of us could agree on exactly what the counts had been. We drew a graph. I just hoped that Mr. Creative Math Teacher didn’t know the correct answers either. How many were horizontal? How many vertical? How many were portraits? We’re not talking about a small number of art pieces here either. There were 39 vertical pieces in the show. Or maybe it was 29? Er, 45? Whatever. We tried using tick marks to keep track of the answers to all of the questions, just in case there would be a grade. That didn’t work out quite right either. I will be the excuse several children use when they bring home a poor math grade this reporting period.
After all the counting, there was all the writing. What was your favorite piece? Why? Look at one of those crazy cartoon pieces and write a story inspired by it. Write a letter to someone about your visit to the art gallery. There were vocabulary words to learn! I definitely don’t remember this much learning going on during my field trips. Going on a field trip meant getting out of doing school work all morning.
It was a very interesting morning. My admiration for those 3rd grade teachers’ willingness to wrangle 30+ kids all day and still agree to take them on trips like this one -huge! I would do it again though I have to admit it was with a sense of relief that I watched all those 8 and 9 year olds get back on the bus with Mrs. G and Mr. B. They all went back to class for the rest of the day. Me - I went home and laid on the couch the rest of the day.
Other pictures here.
Edited to add link to article on the mural.
Vicki
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