I wrote this short essay on volunteering, for a zine submission.
I would really appreciate any and all feedback, good or bad.
Thanks mamas!

When my son started kindergarten at a very small school of 120 students, grades K-6, I became what is know to the PTA as “fresh blood.� Because the district cut funding for art and music in the elementary schools, the PTA put volunteer programs in place to insure students would still get exposure to the arts in their early schooling. My willingness alone suddenly qualified me for becoming an art docent to a combined class of 19 kindergarten and first graders. My having actually taken art classes years and years ago at a college made me influential in helping draw up lesson plans in accordance to district standards. It all happened rather quickly and surprisingly and I appeared to be the only one questioning my sudden qualifications. Having never stood before a classroom as some sort of adult with something to say, something to teach, I started to inwardly panic the night before my first day. I was terrified, not to mention furious with myself for being flattered into this position. How was I going to pull it off?

And then I remembered my first meaningful art lesson, given by an ironworker, (the construction kind, that builds bridges and really tall buildings in downtowns). My dad is conservative. He doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t swear and most people, respectfully, don’t do those things around him. He’s an upstanding, quiet guy. Not the kind you’d expect to be open-minded.
When I was around ten years old, my family (dad, mom, brother, me), went into Los Angeles on weekends to hit the museums. One time we got adventurous, left the beaten path, and meandered over to the Temporary Contemporary art museum. There we saw an installation piece called “Tree Lover� which consisted of a mechanical man humping a huge plaster tree. I laughed mischievously. I couldn’t wait for my dad to see it, cover my eyes, yell at the museum staff, and whisk us away to the safety of the Children’s Museum. But he only laughed. When I looked up at him, puzzled, he told me that looking at art was like listening to other people’s opinions. That sometimes it’s the only way to be heard.

That’s what I took with me to my son’s class every Friday for seven weeks. Art isn’t something only fancy smart people understand. It’s another way of expressing oneself. We can teach kids history and math, to memorize facts and solve problems with numbers, but it’s through the arts that they learn about themselves and learn empathy for others. There are no wrong answers. Expression through the arts is a power they can harness even in the seemingly powerlessness of childhood.
I ended up throwing out half of the lesson plans. I didn’t want to bog them down with vocabulary words and timelines. I passed out the canvas paper, the brushes, and paint. They learned about colors through mixing. We looked at pictures of artwork and they shouted out the colors they saw, how the colors used made them feel. They shouted out the shapes they recognized. We traced the lines with our fingers. There were no raised hands. I told them to shout it out.

They’re last project was an assemblage/collage piece inspired by Picasso’s violin collage. They used painted boxes, newspaper, string, and other strips of paper with lots of glue, some paint, and messy charcoal. At first they thought it was kind of weird. Was it art?
They were finding that they were already challenging their perceptions of art. They had learned a lot. One of the first graders, while putting his project together, exclaimed that this was one of the best days of his life! For a teacher, a volunteer, inexperienced one, at that, is there any better affirmation?

hippohank.com!