Here are some photos of the mural about NY and Finger Lakes Region history at the Caroline Elementary School, which was funded by IPEI and a Local Capacity grant from the Community Arts Partnership.
I presented an assembly to the whole school on the project last April, and the students got all excited. We then started to get to work. We had 6 days of development and composition, which meant that I met with every third through fifth grade class in the library to get images from the internet during their Library Time. Then I met with each class for 15 minutes to show them the composition. Finally, I worked with every third through fifth grader for 15-30 minutes individually, and with some students for much longer. The mural is all curriculum-based: third grade studies Finger Lakes and NY State, fourth grade studies the Iroquois Nation and fifth grade studies immigration and the Erie Canal. Taking all the students’ images, I came up with the composition for the 143-foot-long mural.
The goal of this project was to create a teaching tool to help students learn both subject matter and art. The teachers have already implemented the mural as a teaching tool in third and fifth grade. It would seem impossible for a student graduating from Caroline not to know the Finger Lakes and NY State Region, now that they walk down this hall each day. This mural really accomplished everything I wanted it to.
Every student and most of the faculty put their handprint on the mural.
