I teach Art to grades Pre-K through 8 at Christ, Prince of Peace School in Manchester, MO. This is in west St. Louis County for those unfamiliar with the St. Louis area. It is a fairly affluent area and most of our students have had the benefit of some kind of "schooling" since they were 3 years old. I have chosen to use the 3rd grade class as my focus group for this VTS class. I see these students once per week for 45 minutes for Art class. My VTS sessions are going to be in addition to our regular Art time as I have arranged with the classroom teacher a time when they can come into the Art room just for VTS. This way they can look forward to VTS and not feel like it takes away from their short time allotted for "art making" each week.
I've chosen the 3rd grade partly because there is only one 3rd grade in my school (whereas there are 2 classes of other grades), and partly because of their location in the building right next to the Art room so it will be easy for their teacher to get them to my room. But also because of a few students in the class who I feel might really benefit from the "permission to wonder" as Yenawine puts it. There are 22 students in the class; 10 boys and 12 girls. One little boy in particular, Student H., is very quiet and almost seems fearful of speaking sometimes. He is a twin and his sister, Student M., is in the class too but she is much more of a leader among the girls. A little background about Student H. and Student M., their mother died suddenly right before they entered Kindergarten at our school, so as you can imagine this was a very traumatic event for these children and that is one reason I think Student H. is so quiet and unsure of himself. I'm hoping through VTS that he finds his voice and becomes a little more confident to express what he may be thinking.
There is also a new student to our school in this class and I think VTS will be a good way for him to express himself to his new classmates as well. The class also has a good number of very confident and very verbal "over achievers" or perfectionists, (as I like to call them), and I think they can benefit from the idea that there is no one "right" answer when we have a VTS discussion. All in all, I'm anxious to see these students get excited about looking at these images and "the permission to wonder".
