Invention is the Finest Thing

A Hunger After a Thousand Year Nap by Jacek Yerka

       This time I will not complain. I am not angry. I’ve actually found something to swoon over: a group of writers using modern and contemporary art to inspire children to write.

      Now, this probably isn’t a new idea, but the impact it had on children was completely different from anything they would experience in their classrooms, smothered as they are with objectives, tests, and data. No, this was about thinking and responding, creating a piece of writing using a spark of inspiration from paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs.

     Here’s how it works: Schools contact the museum and set up a day to visit.  The museum can handle up to five classes, usually from second grade through high school. Schools don’t pay anything to tour the galleries, but they must arrange for buses. Once they arrive, children are put into small groups, assigned a writer, and off they go. The writer’s job is not to teach about the art. The writer’s job is to teach children to look at art and help them create poems, stories, observations, descriptions, characters, and memories.  

     Picture this: 

     An emerald green lawn with a stainless steel sculpture by land artist Michael Heizer carved into the ground. Fifteen second graders walk slowly down its three sections, shouting out what the shapes looks like. “Can we do it again?” And back they go along the curves, the loops, and the pointed turns. They sit on the sidewalk in the shade and begin to draw and write.  

Emily writes:

It looks like a roller coaster doing a loop to loop.

Next… this reminds me of flashing fire.

This reminds me of slippery slides.

 And then Zarya:

Looks like a snake going around looking for food and starving to death.

It feels like I am in a tunnel trying to get out, but I am trapped.

I am going down and down the stairs trying to find beautiful art.

      After they finish reading their pieces, one little boy says, “That was fun. I think we need a group hug.” And that’s exactly what they did, the teacher, the children, and the writer, all of them in a tight circle, laughing.  It sure beats a classroom with a chart on the about similes and metaphors.

     I watch third graders as they look at Magritte’s Dominion of Light, that mysterious painting that’s both day and night at the same time. The shadows speak of deep quiet, and the children place themselves inside the painting in the dark of night, to imagine the sounds they might hear. Zulek writes:

I hear leaves crumbling.

I hear birds chirping.

I hear ripples of water.

I hear bats flapping their wings trying to get home.

I hear bears yawning to go to sleep.

I hear a tree falling in the water calling for help.

I hear the sun fall down and go to sleep so the moon can awake.

As the class leaves this gallery to visit another, they pass a group of their classmates. With thumbs up, they say, “You guys are going to love this.”

     The seventh graders sit in front of Cy Twombly’s huge 1994 work, Say Goodbye Catullus to the Shores of Asia Minor. This work tells a story through color, shapes, and words. It is a story of great love and the desolation that comes with great loss. The writer has the group copy these words lifted from the painting: shining white air trembling. Students can respond in any way they choose. Here’s Giselle’s:

White air, I’d like to breathe when I step out to the real me. White to me is peace and warmth and all the good stuff that you want to be. I find myself in the opposite direction, not knowing who or where I want to be. My life has never been real clear for me. The sky has disappeared from my dreams. I lie in fear hoping one day to see the white air in me, but so far all I see are my dreams breaking apart. One day I’ll find my way to the free where I can breathe without any fear.

This is magical, like nothing they are getting in school because the arts are gone, cut, slashed away in favor of high stakes testing. But this is here, and it changes and enriches how children put words on the page.

      I follow a group of hearing impaired fifth graders, watching to see how this impacts them. All can use sign language, two can speak, but two are silent, and all of them struggle to make sense of words. The writer helps Raphael by showing him what specific words look like, so he can describe who he is and what’s important to him. She encourages him with smiles, asks to look at what he’s doing. Pretty soon the vacant stare drops away, is replaced with a smiling boy, a boy who wants to be a part of something, a boy who holds the door open as the group moves through the museum. His teacher said, “I’ve never seen him like this before. I’m amazed. We can’t get him to respond like this. He’s totally different here.”

      Yes, it’s a hunger satisfied, nourishment absorbed into every cell. These moments don’t show up on the principal’s desk or make into the newspapers. But the interactions here, in this space, make a difference forever in the lives of children.

      That means everything.