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Our pink wolf and friends makes
their way down Moscow's Main Street
during the 2003 Mardi Gras Parade. |
Why puppets, you ask?
Picture a classroom scene: thirty students working in-groups. First
there is a collective vision followed by weeks of intensive work
constructing forms out of newspaper and cardboard, adding organic
details with clay, paper macheing layers of brown grocery bags, and
painting life onto the surface. Then there is the puppet’s body and
costume left to create. More questions linger. How will these puppets
perform? What message will they convey? Will they speak? After seeing
such a process unfold you might ask, “How does this relate to PCEI or
more specifically, to environmental education?” Good question. Many,
including myself, can be curiously confused by the relationship between
puppets and the environment. In search of an enlightened perspective I
interviewed Shannon Crawford, art teacher at Moscow High School and
Renaissance Charter School. It just so happens she’s earned a Master’s
degree in both science and art education. Here is a version of our
conversation.
Michelle: Can environmental science and art be integrated in a
classroom setting?
Shannon: Many times, science is structured and taught in order to
cover the baseline of required state curriculum.” (At this point in
the interview a high school student spoke up to say, “Yeah, I’ve
forgotten everything I learned last year in Biology. It’s just a bunch
of facts. Nothing seems relevant to me. Its boring.”) “Well, that
pretty much hits the nail on the head. While there is a massive amount
of required information to cover, who is to say a student couldn’t write
a creative piece on photosynthesis from the perspective of a plant?
Overall, science should promote stewardship and connection. I see art
as a creative vehicle to digest information. Students need relevance.
They need to be able to relate scientific information to their everyday
life and their personal relationship with the environment.
Michelle: How can environmental science and art be combined
outdoors?
Shannon: They can be bridged in a lot of ways. When I taught at Teton
Science School our goal was for students to walk away with an
appreciation of their surroundings in the outdoors. We used art as a
means to explore our connectedness to nature and the local environment.
We drew maps filled with drawings and paintings of plant and animal
species. We created music out of sounds we heard outside. We
interpreted as many concepts or facts as creatively and hands-on as
possible.
Michelle: How does a project like the EcoCultural Arts Project promote
stewardship and connection with our environment? Why puppets?
Shannon: When students work on a community project like this, it
becomes representative of a real life experience. Subjects begin to
overlap like they do in real life. Suddenly students need to do math,
science, writing, problem solving, revision, and communicate in order
to complete the project. Puppets are tools for students to experiment
with because problems can have more than one solution and questions can
have more than one answer. By working in-groups, students combine their
knowledge and experience while learning new lessons and techniques.
They created beautiful pieces of wearable sculpture. In turn, these
puppets expressed ideas related to our local environment and water
conservation in their performance titled, A Tale of Conservation on the
Banks of Paradise Creek.
After reviewing Shannon’s words, I feel another question rising to the
surface. Why not puppets? |
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