Hands on ESSA

Please come to ESSA today, Sunday March 31, 3 to 6 PM for hands-on learning activities. I will be helping students make Sloyd trivets from Gustaf Larsson's book Elementary Sloyd and Whittling, and Frank Lloyd Wright's Nature Pattern Blocks. Woodturners from the Stateline Woodturning Association will be giving hands on instruction on the lathe, and we'll also have wood carving, pottery making, blacksmithing and more.

In the wood shop we'll use the medical school model, show one, do one, teach one, and if all goes well, my students will be assisting each other.

On Friday my students, fifth and sixth grades worked on boxes and my Kindergarten students made phone stands to give their parents. The idea of Sloyd was to make useful objects that would reinforce the relationship between school and life at home. At that time (mid to late 1800's), many parents saw schooling as useless, in comparison to the usefulness of the child working at home or on the farm. Each child's labor could be a factor in the family's survival. To send a child to school involved sacrifice.

But when the parent saw the child's growth in tangible form, the partnership between home and school was made crystal clear. Instead of report cards or test scores that came home twice a year, providing only an abstract and subjective view of student performance, useful and beautiful objects provided a constant chain of feedback, establishing the child's interest in school, and the parent's resolve in dedicating their own resources to their child's education. When a child sees mother or father using and cherishing a thing she's made, powerful things are happening in that child's life.

More about Hands On ESSA can be found here: https://essa-art.org/events/hands-on-essa/

Make, fix, and create... assist others in learning likewise.