Almost every artist I’ve interviewed for
this column has explained how he or she made a connection to the
visual arts early in life. To better understand how an
elementary-school art class might influence that early focus, I
recently visited with Shirley Frankowiak, who has taught art going
on 30 years.
“Miss Frank,” as her students call
her, says she knew she wanted to be an art teacher back in the
fourth grade. Today she teaches more than 200 students at Jane
Addams Elementary School and about 250 at Black Hawk Elementary
School, the same school she attended as a youngster. District
186’s first- to fifth-graders receive one hour of visual-arts
instruction every week.
Though many people may consider art one of
four basic languages, along with the written word, music, and
three-dimensional expression, Frankowiak doesn’t see it that
way. To her, art is not a different language but an extension of
language that uses many of the same disciplines associated with
other types of learning.
“Harmony and repetition and other
elements come together in art as they do in music, history, and
even mathematics,” she says.
“As art teachers we work to integrate
art into other forms of study, to help kids better understand
relationships as they’re written. Outside my art class, other
teachers ask their students to draw pictures based on their
writing, and we teach art by using vocabulary they will encounter
in other classes. Radial design is an example. Principles taught in
making a creative pizza design — dividing, multiplying
— will be encountered again in geometry class. Making a mask
in art class based on what a student learns about African tribal
masks adds dimension to the learning process.”
“Everybody has different abilities, in
math and the rest, but everybody can be a visual learner,”
Frankowiak says.
Frankowiak’s classroom at Black Hawk is
decorated with reproductions of the works of Monet, van Gogh,
Renoir, and other masters. “Those reproductions generate a
lot of questions — mostly ‘Is he dead?’ ”
Frankowiak says with a smile. Today’s art classes include
regular reading from art history books.
Students with a real aptitude for art stand
out early. Such students consider the approach; they work on the
idea first before putting pencil to paper and take their time.
“I don’t judge whether art is good or bad. I look at
how they’re meeting the objectives of the assignment,”
Frankowiak says. “The quality of the art, because
that’s so subjective to begin with, is not a factor in the
grading. Enthusiasm is a better criterion for assessing art at this
stage than the details.”
Grades are based on how well a student meets
the “rubric” (baseline goals spelled out on a sheet of
paper for each art lesson) and the student’s enthusiasm. All
art teachers in District 186 meet regularly to set standards and
create projects that meet the standards of District 186 and the
Illinois State Board of Education.
During her career, Frankowiak has seen
elementary-school art classes expand from 30 minutes a week to 60
minutes a week. The resources she is provided have increased as
well. She says she celebrates her two sinks (“absolutely
wonderful,” she says), and the art-history textbooks that
line the lower shelves of her classroom.
This article appears in May 19-25, 2005.
