One of the students from Garin Elementary School went with her parents on a trip to Europe, and in a museum saw Rembrandt’s painting called “The Night Watch.” The work of art stirred the little girl’s emotions. She was so excited about seeing the painting that when she returned she enthusiastically shared her experience with us, saying, “I saw ‘The Night Watch’.... It was so great!”

How could a thing like that happen? How is it possible to instill a sense of passion for the fine arts into the hearts and minds of elementary school students? We think we have found ways to do just that!

Instilling Art into Students’ Hearts and Minds
The two of us are part of a team of teachers and parents in the Brentwood School District who are working together on the Docent Art Program. This is our way of helping children come to the kind of appreciation of the fine arts illustrated by the reaction of the student from Garin Elementary school. We create, in some cases at least, really awesome connections between the young people and the art world.

As part of the program last year we presented “The Night Watch” to a class of students. We discussed Rembrandt and thoughtfully viewed a print of the picture together. The class answered questions that were designed to help them think about the work and to understand the artist’s techniques and intentions.

The lesson prepared the elementary student who visited the museum in Europe for the wonderful experience of seeing the painting itself. She understood what she was seeing, and could tell her parents about Rembrandt and share with them some information she had learned about the painting.

Children from America typically find things like taking a tour of an art museum with their parents to be a completely boring experience. They are turned off by the activity, in most cases, because of their complete lack of exposure to the things they are looking at. They have no understanding of what they are seeing, so they find the experience boring. How could it be otherwise?

Awesome Art!
The need for the docent program seems self-evident. One of the strong indications of the fact that we’re fulfilling a real need is that parents regularly ask the docents about art lessons for their children. Obviously, many of them see the advantages of what we do.

We have discovered that it takes about three class sessions to make the connection with a class of students. That seems to be the length of time required for the kids to get into the subject deeply enough to discover the fun and excitement of learning about and creating art. After the third lesson whenever the children see us they always ask things like, “When are we going to do art?” “Are we going to do art today?”

Besides classroom-based instruction, we also conduct out-of-classroom experiences. One of our great successes was bringing in the Diego Rivera project last year, which kicked art awareness in the schools into a higher gear.

Getting Our Hands on the Arts
We don’t merely examine the works of great artists, we also get the children busy creating art for themselves. We cover such concepts as use of space in a painting and how to use various media, such as paints, pastels, charcoal, pencils, markers, crayons, ink, etc.

In one class we studied the work of Louise Nevelson who created famous wall sculptures. After examining Nevelson’s work, we decided to create a wall sculpture of our own. The children ransacked their closets and drawers to find things like shoe boxes, paper towel rolls, buttons, and pipe cleaners. Using these common items we all worked together to create our own wall sculpture.

We call our art docent program “Awesome Art” because we believe that the art we show to the students and that they create themselves really is awesome. All the students in the class who created that wall art would enthusiastically agree that our wall sculpture was an awesome piece of work. After completing our objet de art, we stood back, looked at it carefully, and unanimously concluded that the act of creation had been a completely successful effort.

The docent program enlists other community resources to help bring the arts to our classrooms. For example, two members from the Watercolor Association of California taught one of the 3rd grade classes how to do watercolors, showing them interesting techniques for creating sky and water effects.

The Discover Art League is very active in our community. Sue Clanton taught a watercolor/oil/pastel class in one of our schools. Another member, Juli Mijares, from the Brentwood Press, conducted classes on photography at Garin School.

Garin School has been the school that initially carried the torch in getting the docent program started. The teachers and parents were very supportive. Mrs. Byrnne, a 3rd Grade Teacher, has not only been an enthusiastic supporter, but two years ago she applied for a thousand-dollar grant from the school district to help fund the program.

The people at Garin School opened wide their arms in embracing the program that we were bringing to them. Tricia Cox still continues to carry on the work of the docent program at Garin.

Funding and Staffing Awesome Art
As might be imagined, we’re funding the Awesome Art project on a shoestring. Especially during this current time of declining resources we’ve had to dig deep to find the finances to meet even the limited expenses that the program requires. All of us volunteers have, at times, funded our projects out of our own pockets.

When we began the program, we were able to use some consumables from the particular classroom we were presenting in — paper, crayons, poster board, etc. But now school finances are so tight we’ve been cut off from even that resource.

Jan Melloni, President of the Art Society, has been a huge help in locating funds to support our work in the schools. She helped us fund the wonderfully successful Diego Rivera exhibit last year. This year she applied for a grant from Mervyn’s/Target to provide funds.

We sometimes have a problem recruiting parents because many of them feel unqualified if they don’t have art talent or formal art learning. However, the docent program is more like bringing an art museum or an art studio to the students rather than like teaching a formal class.

The actual learning is easy to administer because our instructional materials provide all the necessary information and directions.

Anyone is capable of using one of our lessons to energize children in appreciating and creating art. The main requirement for people who help with the docent program is to be enthusiastic about the arts.

Defining Goals and
Implementing Resources
We’re not working in a political vacuum trying to implement our arts education program. In 1990 Congress passed the Educate America Act, which defined standards for education, including setting specific standards for the arts. The California Department of Education defined statewide standards based on that act.

State and local districts are beginning to change their attitudes toward the arts. We both served on the Art Committee for the school district, headed by Mary Black, and began talking about how to implement the state standards in our local school district.

California schools are facing particular challenges in meeting the state-mandated standards for the arts because of the absence of regular art instruction in the classrooms. The Brentwood School District lacks resources to do art because of the current budget crunch. It seems that during difficult times the Visual Arts Program becomes the first thing to get slashed from the curriculum. What cannot be done on a professional level must be done by our volunteers in the docent program.

A Usable Curriculum for Classroom Education
Creating an appropriate art curriculum, which would really permit the docent program to respond to the state-mandated standards, was a real challenge. Fortunately, we discovered Barbara Herberholz, a gifted artist and teacher specializing in teaching teachers how to teach art. Barbara had created an instructional program and designed learning modules that exactly suited our needs.

Barbara is providing materials for our volunteer-based program for a minimal fee. Her materials are very age-appropriate and grade-appropriate. They also tie in directly with California State Standards as mandated by the Federal Government discussed above. The Arts Commission and the Arts Society provided the money to purchase the instructional program.

Especially for the older grades, Barbara’s program is multi-disciplinary. It is literacy based with a lot of extensions — for example, writing a poem to describe a work of art. The vice principal at Ron Nunn was especially delighted with this. He is now at Loma Vista and we’re planning to get this program started there with him helping us. In a few years we would like to see the program extend into all the schools.

It took a year to sell this to the school staff in the first school, Paul Krey Elementary. The staff ultimately committed to three years of helping to manage the docent program. The Paul Krey Parents Club conducted a fund raiser and raised $4,000 in seed money to get the program launched.

We now have 41 volunteers at Paul Krey. We are bringing art to many of the classrooms more than once a month, using supplementary materials to fill in the extra classroom sessions. Some teachers have requested that lessons be provided once a week and, in some classes, we are actually doing this.

Expanding Art Education Throughout the District
We are currently in four of the seven schools in the Brentwood School District. We would like to see the docent program go into all of the elementary schools, including the two new ones being planned.

A new volunteer, Kindel Buckley, has recently stepped forward at Ron Nunn. Kindel got interested in the docent project and took it to the principal at Ron Nunn who was elated at the prospect of doing this at his school. Kindel is planning to begin teaching the 4th grade lessons in her son’s class.

Two docents are team-teaching the art program in Mrs. Alan’s first grade class at Brentwood Elementary School. Margo Olsen, the principal, is really excited about the program. We introduced the docent program to her last year and she said that her 4th and 5th grade teachers were really looking forward to it.

Future Plans
January — Stanley Mouse is a noted artist who did the cover art for some of the most famous bands in Rock & Roll history, such as the Beatles, Eric Clapton, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Journey, the Steve Miller Band, and the Grateful Dead. Mouse will conduct seminars for students from 3rd through 7th Grade.

Teachers from the school district will prepare the students to understand Stanley Mouse’s contribution to the popular art scene. After exposure to Mouse’s vision and techniques, students will be encouraged to design their own art covers.

We are expanding the art docent program into other areas. For example, we are planning to bring pottery and clay work into the classrooms.

May — We are planning to sponsor a district-wide art show, with all schools displaying their artwork in the Brentwood Arts Commission Gallery at the Business and Technology Incubator on Sand Creek Road.

Mervyn’s and Target donated $2,500 to the Brentwood Arts Society to help matte and frame student artwork for this show. We are really excited about this; it will bring the entire community together. Parents, teachers, and students will all be gathering around fine arts.

What’s Important
We believe that instruction in the arts should be viewed as foundational learning and not just as some ancillary study that can be added as an appendage to children’s educational experiences when times are good and then discarded when times get hard and budgets get tight.

Someone said about the graphic arts, “Art can be learned like any other subject, and should be. It is the foundation for effective visual perception and development of visual perception is fundamental to learning in any field.”

Well, that sounds pretty important, doesn’t it? If arts education does help us to be able to really look at the world around us, let’s do whatever we can to keep our children from growing up with visual impairment caused by the lack of opportunity to develop this important faculty. °

If you would like to volunteer your time or money in support of this worthy program, send an email to editors@110mag.com