Hazel Lucas' Projects

In Hazel Lucas’ class, social studies lessons become opportunities for personal self-expression:

• As a culminating project for a unit on family history, students create personal “quilts” consisting of images and items that are important to them — a favorite compact disk, a photo of a pet, or a trading card of a favorite baseball player, for example. To lay out their quilts, students refer to principles of art and design they have learned, such as repetition and composition. Individual student collages are assembled into a class “quilt” that hangs at the front of the room.
• Lucas concludes by having students reflect on the project, asking why it was important to do it, how it illustrated their personalities, and how an artist might approach the project. When she asks the children if they feel that they are artists, their answer is an enthusiastic “yes.”