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Health & Fitness

Family Home as Gallery: Remixing Students' Schoolwork.

Before you toss students' schoolwork in the trash, read on to see how you can re-imagine its use and have fun remixing it as a family.

Right now, I am in New York City completing a fellowship with the Holocaust Educators Network.

The city has life in every crevice. Life which, given the gravity of our work, the other fellows and I appreciate observing. One can’t help but feel inspired by all of the art. Museums, housing some of the world’s most magnificent works of art, spot city sidewalks.  Subway rides leave behind a smattering of seeds for creative stories.  On one ride, I scribbled the following Haiku: Walking New York blocks / Edge of glory touching me. / Gone gaga, like them. 

Throughout the school year, students scribble and create myriad items.

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I’m astounded at the piles of projects—be they found poems using newspaper clippings or collages of seminal scientific discoveries—we find ourselves with come summer.  When the school year’s last bell rings, there are little heaps and lonely bundles of the year’s creations.

Please don’t throw them away! 

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When I’m in Tampa, one of my favorite pastimes is visiting vintage shops.  I find the artifacts, visual vignettes throughout each shop, to be sprinklings of inspiration.  Often, I am surprised at how much vendors are able to charge for old schoolbooks filled with doodles and attempts at cursive.  Tattered hand puppets, perhaps taken to school for a starring role during story time, go for more than a new package of designer label socks.  Winding through aisles of shabby chic items, I kick myself for all of the potential treasures I’ve chucked throughout the years.  I could have earned enough money to support my present day school supply addiction.  I don’t pass up a good gel pen deal!

My suggestion is this: don’t toss!  Rather, recycle, remix, and reinvent the school year’s creations.  Going through projects gives parents and student-children time to reminisce on the year’s motley learning experiences.  Sorting through projects gives family members time to revive the moments of sharing that tend to cease after about second grade.  A visit to the local craft supplies store can provide some of the essentials you may need, may just want, as you rehab schoolwork.  Some things you may want to try involve shadow boxes, a clothesline and wooden clothespins, and decoupage materials. 

By May, students who enjoy writing are likely to have enough material to compile a mini-anthology.  Writing ought to be shared, read, and relished.  Display it in a shadow box.  Perhaps there are snapshots taken throughout the school year that complement each piece.  Excerpts can be used, as some compositions may be lengthy.  Use funky scrapbooking scissors to make cuts.  Found objects relating to each piece’s theme can be placed in the shadow box.  Creating shadow boxes centered on particular themes may be a good approach.  If seasons and/or nature emerge as common topics/symbols, shadow boxes can be changed throughout the calendar year.

Westchase area residents may not be allowed to use clotheslines in their yards. But, they are a fantastic and space-friendly way to display students’ work.  You won’t use up any precious square footage and may not even need wall space.  Try poking a couple of hooks in the ceiling and tying a knot on each end of the clothesline.  Wooden clothespins work well because they can remain neutral or be painted in spotted, speckled, or striped ways.  Whatever you choose to hang, neither tape nor staples will ruin it.  Simply use the clothespins to suspend the artifacts.  I have used this display style to hang small posters and T-shirts students created when conducting character analyses.  If students kept illustrated flash cards throughout the year, this may be a fun way to celebrate their hours of studying vocabulary and difficult concepts. 

If you are itching to get your hands a bit dirtier, decoupage décor may be for you.  This will definitely mean a trip to the store, but you will end up with a unique vase, tray, or frame.  This is a great way to create a remixed piece suitable for permanent exhibit.  Gather all of the handwritten poems, exemplary extended paragraphs, art class sketches, and on and on.  Enjoy the time sorting through it all, clipping away, and carefully following the decoupage instructions.     

We can approach student work like unique artifacts (excavated from a dig in the Vera Bradley and Jan Sport regions) suitable for display in the Family Home Gallery.  Have fun playing the role of remix artist and curator.

by Tara Payor [tafsu21@aol.com]

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