IU students help children learn creativity, history

Each semester, IU opens its doors to elementary school students. Although the children might be smaller than the average IU student, they have the opportunity to learn art in a real college classroom and exhibit their work just like the big kids.\nScreams of "Mommy, Daddy, look!" filled the hallways of the Education Building as children ran around, doughnuts in hand, pointing out their latest creations.\nThe Saturday Art School Program, sponsored by the School of Education, held its biannual exhibition Saturday. Along with allowing elementary school students to create art, the program benefits IU students in the "Foundations of Art Education and Methods" class by providing student-teaching experience. \n"This is a great opportunity for both the IU and elementary school students," said faculty coordinator Lara Lackey. "The (IU) students get great teaching experience. It feels real. It's not just another course they have to take. It's really what they'll be doing one day when they're teachers. Also, the program is a great service to Bloomington. The University saps a lot of energy from this little community, and this is one way we give back." \nTwenty-nine art education students work with more than 100 elementary school students from the Bloomington area to teach them art. The program is divided into different courses designated by age groups and lasts for seven weeks.\nClasses are modeled on a semester-long theme, and this semester's theme was "Arts of the Great Depression." Lackey said she was surprised by how well even the younger children grasped the ideas surrounding the era.\nSenior Christine Jack, a class instructor, said she and other students tried to show similarities between children's lives during the 1930s and those of modern day kids.\n"We showed them how the game Monopoly was big back then and still is today," she said.\nThe program also looked to popular culture of the time for project ideas. One class created its own superheroes in honor of the Superman comics series, which launched in the 1930s. Another class created hand puppets of characters from "The Wizard of Oz," which IU students explained were representations of political figures of the day. They also interpreted songs from the Broadway musical "Annie," based on the Little Orphan Annie comics of the time.\nEdgewood Intermediate School fourth-grader Claire Schapker said she enjoyed creating art while learning at the same time.\n"My favorite project was doing paintings of shanties," Claire said. "I never knew what a shanty was before."\nThe program requires both instructors and students to work hard, those who participated said.\n"The kids love it and put so much effort into their work," graduate student Amy Robinson said. She added: "One student gave some of her work to her cousin she'd never met before, but she knew he was an artist. I thought that was pretty touching."\nFor the instructors, though, the children's finished work wasn't the only fun part.\n"Sometimes I felt like I was on an episode of 'Kids Say the Darndest Things,'" Jack said. "While they made random, funny comments, they also got really into discussion about the art."\nAnother session of the program begins next semester.