February 9th

Upon entering the room I find Valerie discussing ideas in depth with a parent. Parents are really involved at the Neighborhood School, and Valerie is often trying to accommodate all of their ideas. Andy and Ralph, our high school interns from ICE are here, and they help set up the tables for the kind of lesson that Valerie calls "Collage." At 5 minutes past 9am we scurry across the hall to a Pre-K/K class where we are working on self-portraits with 3 to 4 students at a time, using sharpie markers on large sheets of drawing paper. (probably about 11 x 17 inches) We pick up a few small wooden triangular blocks to prop up the small hand mirrors that Valerie brings for the artists to use, so that they can watch themselves as they work! One boy gets hurt in the block area, and we shift seats at the "Art with Valerie" table to make room for him. As we help him help hold ice over his lip, Valerie asks if he's feeling better, since he already looks better. Alabama starts to shake his head and his eyes well with tears before Valerie cuts him off announcing that is must be time to draw. We share a smile. Class is over before we know it, and we return to Valerie's studio, where Andy and Ralph are waiting for us. We take out the projects from Laura's last class- we are working on pop-up sculptures. But before we know it Laura's class loudly bursts into the art room each grasping a cardboard box in their hands! I guess Laura had a different idea for class today...
With utmost grace, patience and creativity, Valerie seats the children and on the spot, borrows one of the extra cereal boxes provided by Laura's class and creates a sort of abstract sculpture out of the box, to fall right into Laura's class theme of building their own class museum. I watch in amazement how calmly Valerie works in front of the entire class - I can't imagine what I would have done! And in fact, not one single student asked about their projects from the week before. We work hard- each volunteer is assigned to a different table to help plan and supervise. I can't tell how Andy or Ralph are doing, but I am trying hard to make my table's sculptures stand tall and proud as Valerie's example did. My table seems to be struggling. With hardly any 3D or Design skills under my belt, I wonder what I would have done if this would have happened to my own class. Some of the students seem discouraged with the difficulty of folding back the heavy cardboard. I try to share some tips- mostly techniques that I learned in the past in printmaking classes which dealt with hand-tearing paper. One little boy wanted to use the cardboard itself as part of the detailing for the sculpture where most other students were using a sort- of light weight colored construction paper. I quickly notice that his idea will prove too heavy for his sculpture to endure and together we cut a slit into the side of the sculpture in order to tuck the detailing into the wall of the sculpture, rather than just glue or staple it onto the top. We step back to view the work, and he says that this new detail looked just as his had pictured. I breathe a heavy sign of relief.