South Junior High School students recently took a field trip to the College of St. Benedict, not to tour the school, but to meet students from Holdingford Public Schools. South and Holdingford students created cultural art pieces that represent their own ancestral history through their intercultural studies classes. Sarah Drake, a resident teaching artist, facilitated the art collaborative.
Marian Lyndgaard, art teacher at Holdingford, met South art teacher, James Van Horn, and Drake at the Arts Camp for Educators last summer. The three decided to do an art collaborative together based on culture and diversity. Lyndgaard wrote the grant to hire on Drake as the local resident artist, and the grant was awarded through the Central MN Arts Board.
This collaborative is one example of a multi-district collaborative with the equity services department of St. Cloud Area School District.
“The collaborative exists with seven other districts,” explains Sebastian Witherspoon, director of equity services. “Integration is a part of our equity plan. We look for opportunities for learning and integration. We bring together students with different backgrounds–students that look different. They discover that they’re not really different.”
Prior to meeting each other, students in both schools began creating art pieces that represented themselves to share. The students then gathered together in groups, with a mix of students from each school. Drake set the tone for the conversation with commonality exercises.
All students were assigned the task of discussing what was unique about themselves, something that no one else could identify within their group. Then they had to start writing down what was common among them.
The task of finding something unique was harder then they anticipated. It was clear they had more in common than they thought.
One group had a girl whose favorite color was pink, a boy who plays soccer, another who was an only child, a girl half-Japenese and a boy half-Mexican. They all loved food, especially fun dip, had families, were involved in school activities–whether it was sports or playing instruments–and even a shared love of rainstorms.
Drake led the large group discussion. When the unique items were shared, the small groups discovered that what was unique in their group was not unique as a whole. For example, other students were also only children, played soccer, loved the color pink or were half-Mexican.
“We notice that we have way more in common than differences,” said Drake to the group.
Following the discussion of commonalities, students were given their art pieces to share with the group and spoke to each other about their ancestral backgrounds, what they discovered doing their artwork and what they learned from each other’s visual representations.
“They learn from themselves, their classroom and across districts,” explains Drake. “They learn from folks they maybe don’t see every day in their classroom. And, maybe get to know themselves and others because when we know more about our history ourselves, it helps us build bridges with other folks.”
Holdingford and South students walked away feeling a stronger sense of belonging as they discovered more about themselves and others.
Student art pieces are displayed in each school for classmates, staff and families to see, with the hope of sharing what they learned about culture, diversity and commonality.