A Quest for Haiti: Reflections on a Year in Haiti: Art Nouveau

There is a San Francisco-based organization called Art in Every Classroom that provides art classes in schools, small grants for schools to purchase art supplies, and works with other organizations to do community art projects for neighborhoods in the San Francisco area. Although we are not in San Francisco, Lekòl Jezi-Mari in Fon Ibo received a grant to purchase art supplies that the 3rd grade could use. One of last year’s yearlong volunteers worked with teachers on the first lesson. By the time everything was settled and the activity was done, however, school was almost over and there wasn’t time to continue.

We started the program again this year with the new 3rd grade classes. I will be working closely with the 3rd Grade teachers to use the lessons and resources provided by Art in Every Classroom to create a curriculum that works here and that can hopefully be extended to the rest of the school in the future. Art in Every Classroom provides 16 lessons with lesson plans, different pictures and background information that correspond to the activity. For example, there is a lesson about self-portraits and students learn about Frida Kahlo and the self-portraits she made before drawing one of themselves. All of these are in English, however. I spent a while translating the first lesson into Creole, adapting it a little so the directions were very clear, and preparing some teaching materials that can be used this year and (hopefully) for years to come.

Two weeks ago, we had our first lesson. Since none of the children had ever had an art lesson before, we figured starting with the basics was important. So, our first lesson was going to be on the color wheel and learning the difference between primary and secondary colors (this was the lesson they started with last year too). I had met with the teachers before hand to go over the lesson and to let them know that I would be there in the class to help them make sure that kids weren't painting on each other, but that I didn't want to actually teach the lesson itself. One of the problems last time was that the teachers relied on the yearlong volunteer to teach the lesson, and I didn't really want that to happen again.

So, on Friday morning, I headed to the school. We were planning on doing the entire wheel, but we ended up only having time to do the primary colors. In fact, the second 3rd grade class stayed after school in order to have their lesson. It was fun to watch the teachers explain everything, and then watch the kids start painting. They were very absorbed in their work! We had a little trouble dividing the wheel into 6 and a few kids struggled with the idea that there needed to be an empty triangle in between each color, but overall they turned out great.

Last Thursday (there was a holiday on Friday), we started the secondary colors. This week was a little bit hairier. One of the 3rd grade teachers wasn’t going to be there, so the other teacher was going to teach the lesson and then leave to be with his class. After the lesson itself was taught and the instructions explained, the teacher left and Beth (I made her come help me) and I were left to pass out paint and make sure the kids finished their wheels. It was crazy to say the least. We had some difficulties figuring out where the secondary colors went on the wheel and some students were painting in the wrong places. But it all worked out in the end!

After we finished, we decided that we should wait until the next week to finished the wheels with the second class because it took much longer than we were anticipating. Since then, I’ve been thinking about what we could do to make things go smoother next time. I have a couple of ideas and I'm hopeful that they will be successful and the second lesson will be a little less chaotic. It will also be helpful to have an actual teacher in the room!

I'm super excited to continue with this project. I love doing art and I believe that every child should have the opportunity to express themselves creatively. The teaching style here is very much based on memorization, going exactly by the book, and there is very little room for students to formulate their own opinions. I think that having the chance to utilize the right side of their brains is important and I’m excited to keep working with the 3rd grade and see where their creative juices take them!