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Summer is traditionally the season to take some time off, but the Department of Art expanded its popular Young Artists Workshop this year, offering classes for the first time during school vacation.
Rising first–third graders and sixth–eighth graders created Cranimals, based on the fantasy world of Dr. Seuss; studied birds’ nests to learn observational drawing; and used gelatin molds for experimental printmaking. Undergraduate and graduate art education students taught the classes in the inaugural summer program.
“Parents have been interested in summer classes for a long time,” said Minuette Floyd, an associate professor of art and director of the Young Artist Workshop. “We thought this would be a good time to start a summer program here in the art department.”
Until this summer, the Young Artists Workshop has been offered for many years in the fall and spring as part of the School Art Program, a class required for all art education majors. The students meet on Mondays and Wednesdays to learn about working with children and constructing lesson plans. Then for seven Fridays, the students teach their lessons to children from the Columbia community and from as far away as Aiken and Orangeburg.
The number of students in the class determines the number of classes offered, and students often teach with a partner. This summer, the students taught individually and prepared every aspect of the class themselves.
“One of the things that distinguishes the Young Artists Workshop is that our teachers develop their own themes. They design the lessons and have the opportunity to carry those themes and lessons all the way through,” Floyd said. “I really emphasize their learning how to construct quality art lessons before introducing them to art curricular guides.
“We talk about some of the appropriate ways to introduce lessons and how to develop a quality art lesson that includes personal relevance and adherence to national and state visual art standards. We want the children to have quality experiences.”
Choosing a strong theme helps the teachers create strong lesson plans. “With a strong theme, lessons naturally connect to one another,” Floyd said. “It makes the learning easier for students when they understand the big theme. Then the teachers can refer their students back to what they learned earlier. We try to get them to start thinking about some of the issues that affect students, such as pollution, the environment, or homelessness in class.”
Floyd expects the summer Young Artists Workshop to grow next summer and will begin advertising for the summer 2006 workshop in the spring. “This summer’s classes have been small, about nine to 12 students,” Floyd said. “But smaller classes gave the children a lot of individual, one-on-one attention.”
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