Allen Road Elementary Students Celebrate Community Connections

 

Visitors to Allen Road Elementary School now have a special view of their school community thanks to a school-wide collaborative art project led by Megan Paye. Megan is an art teacher at both Allen Road Elementary and Gillette Road Middle School.  As an art teacher, she recently worked with Allen Road students around the concept of being a part of a community. The students gave examples of different communities they belong to (sports teams, North Syracuse and churches) and how it feels to be part of those communities. Megan discussed the project and said, “The conversations led to students sharing that it feels good seeing friends they've made on the bus in the hallways, at lunch, or seeing people from school at the grocery store. Students discussed the importance of caring for the things they share in their school community, like art supplies, music instruments, bathrooms, and the playground. Students used words like belonging, happy, and fun when chatting about how it feels to be a part of our Allen Road community.” After their discussions, Megan provided students with a lesson about drawing themselves with shapes (rather than stick figures) and gave them index card-sized pieces of paper to work on. Students drew themselves and used special items to personalize their mini-selves. The project produced a wide variety of individuals including sports players, video gamers, gymnasts, fashion designers, of course, artists and more. The individual pieces were then placed by the students onto a larger Allen Road Elementary School Community mural. After the project, Megan shared pictures of the collaborative works of art and said, “I love the diversity in how they chose to create themselves, some realistic and others very silly with giant heads or huge mouths. This was a great way for me to learn more about my students and their interests, but also to gauge what we need to focus on in future projects.” Great job Allen Road Elementary! We’re excited to see what your future projects are!