the following podcast is produced or sponsored by a community member the content views and opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not reflect those of b mc or the town of belmont b m c welcomes your comments call us at six one seven four eight four two four four three or email us and access at belmont media dot org hello everyone welcome to community conversations i'm your host roger call to everyone and knows schools have a strong music program a strong drama program vocal music instrumental music drama but the belmont schools also have a very strong visual arts program across the grades from kindergarten through high school and today we're going to talk about the visual arts program i have with me today  bellman art teacher fine art teacher nicole pond she has been with the schools for nineteen years and she teaches art at the burbank elementary school thanks for having me today thank you for coming in i know it's the middle of the school week so we appreciate you coming over to the studios here in the square nicole before we really get started i'd like to ask you accept one ground rule chart if for if you will and that is that one of my concerns about fine arts is that people have unstated assumptions  or they think they know what's going on and i'm one of the i think i'm fairly typical so i would ask you not to be bashful if you hear me say something that has an unstated assumption that it's just plain wrong sure or more likely out of date ok what but i'd like you to do is just to lay the groundwork you do you teach at the burbank correct and you teach exclusively art correct and do you teach across the grades can you give us a little insight into sure what do you do with the burmese sure of all the elementary teachers in general there are four of us and we all teach kindergarten through fourth grade at the elementary levels and then there are four middle school teachers that teach fifth through eighth grade and then there are four high school teachers so there's twelve of us that make up the team of the visual arts department in is there a regular interaction between those twelve teachers depending upon what the need is we have monthly curriculum meetings where we meet as a department and then there's a subgroup of us that are part of a professional learning team together we've been together for about seven years now where we're looking at different areas and avenues of our inspiration where ideas come from and each year we're unraveling a new part of that professional learning team together i said that i'd  talk about the visual arts today and i have to admit that when i started thinking about this show when i said to myself visual arts when i had my mind was painting and  drawing and pottery things like that visual arts really is much broader than it is that's very true and as visual art teachers we have to be trained across all of those different disciplines so that we can in turn teach it to our students so visual arts entail drawing painting witches water colors temper paint acrylic paints oil paints we also work with clay and other three d sculptural materials would things like  that mixed media collage printmaking which is one of my specialties there's also photography graphic designs textiles weaving so there's so much that encompasses the fine arts as a whole in this is all said within the context of remember remembering that it's k through five or k through four k through four k through four kids we're talking about we're not talking about with what you teach we're not talking about high school kids correct the these are kids these are kid kids yes now when we talk about sculpture that there's a term of art by the way kid gets when we talk about sculpture or something other than painting or form is one of the elements of art which are the tools that we use to teach the arts from and form is about the idea that a sculpture can be viewed from many points of view you can walk around a table look at it from the front the back the top the bottom where the two dimensional peach just has one side so the idea of getting students to understand the difference between two dimensional art versus three dimensional art whether it be clay or model magic or paper mach there's different ways that you can make three dimensional work in three dimensional you're not just looking at it from one point of view it seems to me that when i woke up this morning i tossed the blame my blanket off that my daughter had made for me when she was in college something that i couldn't in my wildest dreams create but textiles is a component of art in textiles would have  rapidly well texture is one of the elements of artists well yes and color plays into textiles as well layout composition these are all vocabulary words as artists that we use and they're not just designated for one medium what you use vocabulary wise for textile also crosses over into painting and drawing as well so it's about giving our kids the tools to understand the mediums that they're working with the techniques the vocabulary words art criticism and art history understanding art through cultures from around the world so there's a lot that goes into teaching students about our not just the production making aspect of it which is something i hadn't even thought of our history teaching our cats to have created absolutely yes they could tell you all about maty send his style and why he started to do cutouts versus his paintings i think our education as a whole has changed throughout the years but i think back when i was a kid and everybody's had to look at exactly like the teachers nowadays it's about problem solving in a unique way where the child can make their own are exposing their own feelings and views and perceptions and choices and no one should look at and that's what we strive for in our programs and has considerable cultural diversity in the school the district in this school system correct do you so you have to be very conscious i would think of teaching in a cross culture or a multicultural to cultural we also as specialist teachers we see every single child in the building so i see every child that's on an i p five a four e l l every child that walks through the halls comes into our art room so we have to be able to adapt materials to children that may have special needs while also making it adaptable to children that are in a typical setting so i have a question short i don't even know if it's an answer one question given you could probably talk for hours but how does one teach art  painting how does one teach how to paint or do you break it down into the elements and teach perspective colors shapes so the good thing about our positions is that for me for example i teach cater for so i'm seeing the same students for five years in a row and we really build our curriculum on a spiraling continuum so what's taught in kindergarten is then built upon a little further in first grade second grade and then they start to master concepts as they move into high school and can really fine tune their our work so at the elementary level it's about exposing them to different artists in our history it's about working with them on their fine motor skills teaching them how to cut properly how to hold a paint brush properly exposing them to the elements of art how artists use line texture color in their work how you can create a composition that's visually pleasing so it's about giving them the tools to create their own artwork based on their personal feelings and beliefs and something i heard i think is it's partially developmental yes it's not simply conveying the skills but it's recognizing what developmental point the kids are at correct correct and in do you measure the progress over the difference from year to year let me tell you going back to the notion of  how this is what they're the kids are like in first grade and this is what they're like in fourth grade just years later you see that same progress i see we do and if you come into the elementary schools or the middle school and you walk down the halls you can see the bulletin from kindergarten students versus fourth grade students and you can see how they've used these different elements in kindergarten and then how they approach their work in the fourth grade and how they have developed it and then they go into the middle school having a strong foundation from the elementary level where then they can pursue it a little bit further and then when they go into the high school they can really narrow in are even take a p art at that point you know i don't have occasion to be in the elementary schools i do go to the high school every now and then but you talked about the displays in the in the hallways is i don't know quite how to put this question is displaying art work part of the educational process it is definitely more in her as artists when we finish a piece it's not just done it's about how we share it with people and how people then can talk about our work so part of our work is how you frame it how you label it what's hanging next to it is there a title for it so that the viewer then can learn about your piece and your process in your production so as i tell my students went to pieces done it's not done it then needs to be shared with the world and how you share it is important takes into account framing it mounting it labeling it all of those things so it's important to see it all the way through to the end and when my daughter was in second grade i think it was second grade but one of the lower grades she made a cat a three dimensional cat and there was a in our show at the moment saving yes that's where we is and do it back in the day is are there gallery of art which is up on the third floor of the home or building every year we do an all town art show in may up there and we have a reception and it's a selection of pieces from grades k through twelve to share with the community and it's always  highlight there we have five six hundred people come out for the reception we've also recently done an art teacher show at the belmont gallery of art that came down in october called off the clock and this was our third series of off the clock where the teachers created work to share with the community so that they could see that we do what we teach and for people who are not familiar with the my gallery of art gallery of art is on the top floor i believe top floor of a home o building and they have wonderful exhibits there and they've really been a great partnership for us in the community is you teach at the burbank and obviously several elementary schools standards that we need to follow so we look at those standards we look at what the objectives are and then we develop our units within those objectives so there's a lot of times where there's a lot of crossover but i may approach texture differently than how the wellington teacher is approaching texture with second grade but the end result is that the students understand texture and can use the vocabulary word appropriately i'd like to remind our listeners that we are talking today with nicole pond nicole is in a fine arts teacher at the burbank elementary school and she's been in the school system for one thousand years in speaking o  do you are maker on computers do you use technology we have technology in our classrooms we're fortunate enough where we have smart boards we actually received our smart boards a long time ago from the kendall school that had an account left and so all the art teachers were able to get smart boards way before other people have smart boards so that's great and we also have elmo document cameras which help us with our teaching and then other wellington has an i pod i pad station and the art room that was funded through a grant so technology is used in different ways we're hoping when we build the new high school will be able to really dive into the graphic art program out a new high school the drama program in the music program he believes helps kids socially because it allows them to put themselves in somebody else's shoes it helps them to empathize with other people  is the same thing true with the visual art absolutely i think the visual arts help students on so many levels i myself didn't feel like i was a great student at school and art was really the thing that got me through and i see all around students that struggle in school you their behavior really are academically and then they come into the art room and it's this opportunity for them to thrive and it's a great feeling and so i think on a social emotional level the strong points  that the students get to see the same teacher year after year so we get to build a stronger relationship with the students and the family is than siblings that come through we're also getting them to kind of problem solve with twenty first century skills from a brainstorming drawing all the way through to the final product and sometimes that involves collaboration or innovation but it's making them the problem solvers to think for themselves how they can do this and that's what twenty time i think we have some really amazing talented teachers in the district all of us are practicing artists along with being talented teachers and that sends the message to the students that we do what we teach we're passionate about this we exhibit our work outside of school we're here to teach you how to do this we collaborate as a team we have our students collaborate so and we all are certified in our content area and massachusetts teachers have to have their master's degree in their content area so we really hire folks that know what they're doing and what they're talking about and are passionate about it and you teach college can i do i teach at boston university and they are education  i'm curious about thank you for coming by the way i thank you for having me i've got all these thoughts that i've never had occasion to that's great because art is everywhere so it's important to think about it when i was in school through college and beyond i played french horn and we of course the thing about instrumental music is you're either right or wrong somebody has written the music and you play the right note at the right time or you don't and we rehearsed for hours to get it right on the other hand with art it seems like there's more than only creativity you don't want to be creative in an in strumental group can one practice create absolutely or practice imagination i don't know what the right way i think it's practicing how you can train your eye in your brain to think like an artist and look at the world through the lens of an artistic lens because as i say to my students you know if we're doing a still life and you're looking and observing you can go home and practice you can set up some stuffed animals or a bowl of fruit because you really need to train your eyes to think like an artist because art is all around and i want you to view the world around you and see are in the world around you so with some aspect of learning involved there yes you can practice start to get better at it if i can give you the tools and the materials then you can explore and learn and figure out you know what you are gravitating towards whether be clay or painting we all have strengths and weaknesses i personally am not a great portrait artist not a strain for me but i have other strengths well i always laugh because i say that i've never gotten smiley faces on my handwriting maybe people would say that's simply being creative i would like to think of art from two different perspectives to flip sides if you will and ask you about each of those start again from my background in absolutely you know again i think about a squad of twenty four students they all learn differently you're going to have students that learn better visually you have students that learn better through motion or reading so you know in a classroom of twenty four students you need to differentiate your instruction so that you're meeting the goals of all of those students and i think if we can bring the visual arts more into the curriculum a that requires more time sometimes than we have but when i do interdisciplinary lessons with classroom teachers they're a great success because the students see the connection between the classroom and the art room for example at burbank in second grade they do a big biography research project where they're researching someone from throughout history that's important and then in the art room i have them draw a portrait of that person and what we're actually talking about which is part of the curriculum is proper place in the facial features proportions of the face but it doesn't have to be through self portrait they're doing that they're researching in their classroom then they're drawing a person using the proper proportions so there's this great intermingling that's happening between the classroom teacher and myself in a project like that and then from the flip side it seems like sometimes people like me try to put too much significance on the role that art plays in helping  the the other academics and subjects but i've always believed that our has an intrinsic value setting aside whether it has any impact on some of these math or science or research skills that engaging in the creation of art has some sort of intrinsic value absolutely i think the arts can benefit interdisciplinary connections but the arts can also be for art's sake for their their self they don't need to be piggybacked into other subject areas because they can stand on their own and they should and we should yeah we shouldn't try to say we need to maintain a strong i met a tory allies and i guess  we shouldn't try to justify maintaining a strong arts program by saying well it the real purpose is to help kids with their math and so rapidly we want to maintain a strong arts program because it's having a strong arts program is good and unto itself correct correct and we're teaching our students to be consumers of art in this world you know they can go to me sam's and learn to talk about our i think many adults are afraid to go to museums because they don't know when they're looking at a piece what they're even looking at so if we can teach them vocabulary words and ways to talk about and analyze work in a meaningful conversation then they're more apt you know and here in boston we're so lucky to have access to so many cultural things and there's public art that's free all around us as well so it's really important for students to understand how to talk about art as well in the word fun we've been talking about education another bias of mine is that people seem to think that fun and education are not consistent with each other but it seems like part of going to school is just going to school and doing hearted my view on it though is that there should be this balance of fun in education together and it should be a release time for them when they come to me because when they're in their classroom two plus two has to equal four for them to get it right on their math test but when they're in the art room if i'm asking them to come up with a piece of abstract art there's millions of different ways to solve that problem and they're all going to be correct and so i think it's important for them to know that beyond being fun it's educational and there's learning value in it you know we're running a little short on time to i'd like to give you an opportunity to get on your soapbox for a minute if if that's appropriate but again coming back to my wife and i my wife and i go to the tend to go to the music the drama productions we go to the one act plays we go to the fall play we go to the musical we go to broadway night and it seems like an frequently we are not atypical there is a disproportion strike that we're disproportionate there is a public recognition of the performing arts that has been extended to the visual if i completely agree with that because we may just be that you haven't seen that avenue i think our schools are bold some boards full so coming into the schools and viewing it but we have lots of shows throughout the year outside of the schools as well so we have the end of the year our show at the gallery like i was telling you about and we have hundreds and hundreds of people that come out to that show the middle school does a great job of bringing our out into the community as well they're doing a show in boston for boston students every single boston student is going to have a piece and they do it out in boston so the families out there can see the show so swell so i think the art is out there it's just the community tapping into it differently a performance is something that can be highly advertised and you know you can have tickets for it and advertisements for it  whereas artwork as much as we advertise it sometimes it's just a matter of walking around and opening your eyes a little wider and seeing that it's really there and it could be just that we ran with a different crowd yeah that's when yeah things that young to say were at a time i do want to think nicole pond teaches fine arts at the burbank elementary school here in belmont for coming over and talking with thank you for having me i'd like to thank the listeners  for tuning in to community conversations you can access community conversations through the belmont media website at media dot org you can search your should search for the b m podcast network and you can also access this podcast through i tunes by searching for the b m c podcast network you've been listening to community conversations i'm your host roger col i will talk to you again in two weeks