Art Goes to School parent volunteers engaged students in art through discussion and craft.
Supporting art education for more than 150,000 children in New Jersey, Philadelphia and Delaware-area schools, Art Goes To School is a program designed to introduce children to an array of painters and paintings. Originally introduced to Moorestown by parent and artist, Saraan Foster, in 1978, AGTS has thrived over these years, according to Richelle Rabenou, district co-chair of the program.
After 13 years of being the chair, Foster stepped down, and eventually her daughter, Kahra Buss, became actively involved and also served as district chair. In fulfilling its goal, the program recently presented an art lecture and workshop at the George C. Baker and Mary E. Roberts elementary schools.
At these two separate school events, parent volunteers led a presentation for each class grades K-3, along with a craft that consisted of an independent children’s painting project. To date, Moorestown’s AGTS program has about 47 volunteers, who helped run these particular lectures and introduced art to the children through a 45-minute lesson. During the lesson, the volunteers guided the students in a discussion about the artistic detail and style of each painting and the emotions or thoughts each piece of artwork evoked.
At George C. Baker Elementary School, the painting craft was decided upon by the parent volunteers. Since the mosaic theme was popular with the school’s students last year, the parents in one class decided to again incorporate the artistic design into the lesson’s craft.
“One group planned to make copies of one of the paintings and cut them up. The children then worked together to come up with their own picture,” Carol Lee Tang, the AGTS chair at George C. Baker Elementary School chair, said.
Having been involved in the program for four years, Tang said her son likes art, so he enjoys learning about the different paintings and being able to voice his opinion on them. She believes the children who participate also look forward to the crafting activities.
In Sarah Bottinelli’s second-grade class at George C. Baker, children learned how to compare paintings of Paul Klee, Rene Magritte and Edgar Degas. Each painting looked at how a person can be depicted through abstraction, impressionism and cubism. Jenna Tickner, another parent volunteer, led the children in creating their own Paul Klee painting.
Similarly, at Mary E. Roberts Elementary School, parent volunteers had some students create a collage with cutouts from magazines and other paper shapes. Another class made a Chinese dragon out of tissue paper on a paper plate, and another made pictures of roosters with paint, using a fork to make the bird’s feathers.
“As AGTS evolved through the years, the art/craft portion [of the lessons] developed further,” Rabenou, who has been a volunteer for five years, said. “The children use different paints, textures, materials and fabrics to recreate the painting in their own interpretation.”
Additionally, to keep the art-related content consistently unique and interesting, each school year the program’s chairs review all new art portfolios from the Delaware Valley AGTS program. These portfolios typically encompass a wide variety of artists and artwork from across all cultures and time periods, from cave drawings to Rembrandt to Degas to Warhol.
“Paintings, sculpture, quilts, photography and even city murals and statues are all represented in our portfolios,” said Samantha Ulman, the other district co-hair who has been a volunteer with the program for seven years.
Ulman explained that today, getting kids excited about art is the easy part. The more challenging aspect is physically exposing the children to art, a problem AGTS has been able to solve. As she says, AGTS brings the art, and the children bring the fun.
“Looking at art and letting their imaginations run wild is like a breath of fresh air for kids in this fast-paced digital age,” Ulman added. “Kids are so used to fleeting images on a screen, that gazing at a still painting or sculpture for a few minutes naturally helps them to slow down and use a different part of their brain to connect to the artwork and artist on a personal level.”
Agreeing that connecting children to art is important, both principals of the participating Moorestown elementary schools said AGTS is a positive addition to their curriculum.
“Art Goes to School is very well received by our students. We have so many students that love art and creating artwork that it provides them with another creative outlet beyond their once-per-week art class,” Brian Carter, principal at Mary E. Roberts Elementary School, said.
He said the program is similar to the school’s art classes in that all of the artwork is centralized around a common theme. Michelle Rowe, principal at George C. Baker Elementary School, agreed, saying she believes the program is a natural extension of the existing curriculum, as it builds upon both the knowledge of art history and the experience with materials and techniques that students gain in art class.
“AGTS is a wonderful program that offers our students an enriching opportunity to learn about and explore fine art as well as music,” Rowe said.
AGTS Program History
Art Goes to School was established in Moorestown in 1979. It was in that year that Saraan Foster, a Moorestown parent and a commercial interior designer with an education in art, brought the program to town. Foster had been introduced to AGTS by an art school friend who lived in Pennsylvania.
Richelle Rabenou, district co-chair of the program, explained that, at the time, the art classes at the elementary schools were planned to be cancelled due to budgetary restrictions, and Foster felt the AGTS program would be a nice replacement.
The program received the support of Richard Bucko, Ed.D., a past principal of Baker Elementary, who pushed to have the program implemented in the schools. At the time, all three elementary schools — George. C. Baker, Mary E. Roberts and South Valley — were represented.
Rabenou explained that the goal of the program was to provide an understanding of art, artists, paintings and art vocabulary to create a foundation of art appreciation. At the time, the program also continued to the William Allen Middle School social studies classes, making relations between the paintings and the curriculum time periods.
This was taught for grades five and eight and focused on art in European history, American history, black history and Asian history. AGTS had two art sessions each year that focused primarily on art education with a smaller amount of time for a craft portion. Rabenou said that Foster served as the first district chair for 13 years, and throughout the years following, her daughter Kahra Buss, and Moorestown parent, Dana Feinberg, took over as district chairs to continue with the support of art education.
In supporting art education, AGTS is funded by the Moorestown Home and School program, and the funds are used to replenish the art supply bins at the end of each school year. They also support the chapter dues that provide art education to underprivileged students in the participating areas.
