A New Educational Model
by Diane Panazzo and Susan Moldenhauer • photography Ted Brummond and Trice Megginson
Students flood through the doors. Thirty from Cheyenne’s East High; 20 from the fourth-grade class of Laramie’s Linford Elementary School; a dozen pre-K students from Laramie’s developmental pre-school, and a UW class of visual literacy students. And, that’s just in one morning in December 2007.
What opened the flood gates? Although their age and education levels varied, the students were all there for one reason: to take advantage of a new in-depth learning experience at the UW Art Museum.
The high school students and their teachers huddle in a circle in the middle of the gallery, which is exhibiting fine art photographs of the Red Desert. In the center of the circle, looking directly at each student and asking them to describe what they see as they view photographer Martin Stupich’s images, is the museum’s new master teacher, Diane Panozzo.
Using a list of artistic elements she provides to the students, Panozzo asks them to identify the fundamentals and principles of art they see in the images they are drawn to. As each student describes a photograph and why they picked it, the others are quiet and attentive. Together, they explore the details.
"Is anything missing from the images?" Panozzo calls out to the students.
Jason says, "Red."
Panozzo studies the students and asks, "What is Jason referring to?"
Leah replies, "The color of the desert!"
The students look around as they notice that the desert is beige, brown, white, gold, and red. Other students begin to shout out.
"People are missing!"
"Animals!"
"Movement."
Another student says, "You mean, like the wind?"
Panozzo encourages them to look closer and deeper. "Now, let us all go to one image and sketch what you see. Just like writing a sentence, we can put pencil to paper and try the best we can to express what we see. Let’s give it a try!" She is sounding like a UW cheerleader, and the students respond. Some are splayed on the floor looking and sketching; others are sitting, or standing, but all are looking hard and thinking deeply.
Panozzo gives them 10 minutes and asks them to stand by their selected images and talk about them. Allen, with black-cropped curls and a lip ring, shows his sketch of a pipeline in the Red Desert as he explains what he thought about while he sketched the pipe and the desert. He’s worried the desert won’t even look like a desert soon, but a junkyard instead.
"Aren’t deserts like fragile and stuff?"
This leads to an energetic discussion that ranges across a variety of topics—geography, science and natural resources, and art. Students ask questions and then answer them, with Panozzo’s encouragement.
The Master Teacher Pilot Project was initiated after extensive conversations with Wendy Bredehoft, education curator.
"With the changing climate of K-12 curricular standards, we were seeing a significant decline in school tours," Bredehoft says. "Simultaneously, we wanted to improve the museum experience for students, recognizing that original art is an extraordinary resource for natural inquiry that makes in-depth learning possible. We also knew that art is an interdisciplinary process that would enable us to connect with a broad range of disciplines."
The Art Museum’s National Advisory Board agreed and held a special event in Jackson last summer, raising the necessary funds to launch the one-year pilot program.
"I was hired two years ago to help the art museum enhance and deepen the educational program," Bredehoft explains. "Now, with a master teacher on board, we are increasing our collaborations with teachers and professors and working with students for deeper understanding of art and the connections it makes with other disciplines. We’ve made exceptional progress in a short period of time, because we are able to provide a full array of educational experiences for teachers and students alike."
Moldenhauer and Bredehoft hope to secure a full-time permanent master teacher for the education program.
Panozzo’s techniques for teaching include pre-visit preparation through information available to teachers on the museum’s Web site. Students arrive ready to study art. She then puts them through a series of activities during the visit—they observe, write, sketch, ask questions, investigate and research, discuss, reflect, and create. Depending on the length of the museum exploration, many students will draw on inspiration from the artwork they saw and the discussions they had experienced in the galleries to create their own artwork in the Shelton Studio. Follow-up activities are also offered on the program’s Web site, and Panozzo works independently with each teacher to ensure the students have productive learning experiences.
Diane Panazzo (left, front) lectures to Cheyenne East High School
students in the museum’s studios
Panozzo, a teacher in Wyoming schools for more than 26 years, came to the museum as an intern with the MFA creative writing program. She and Bredehoft began brainstorming how to make learning accessible to students. The master teacher position helps students and teachers K-16 discover how to use art as an impetus and inspiration for learning. Hundreds of students already have benefited, as teachers and professors have collaborated with the master teacher and experienced the wealth of resources offered by the Art Museum.
Lydia Dambekalns’ Art Methods I and II students, who worked the entire fall semester with Panozzo on the museum’s exhibits, says working with a teacher who helps them understand how to use original artwork as inspiration for deeper understanding of subject matter at the secondary level is a valuable experience.
Shelley Miller, an art teacher from Laramie High School, has made the art museum part of her curriculum. Last fall, her art students visited the museum a number of times to see and discuss the dissident art on view in Forbidden Art: Russian Post War Avant Garde. They used comprehensive curricular materials developed for the exhibit and posted to the Art Museum’s Web site both before and after their visits.
The Master Teacher Pilot Project is evolving with input from the teachers, professors, and students after their visits. As it continues to expand, faculty members hope students and teachers will think differently about what a museum visit can be.
Izaac Peel (top) from Spring Creek Elementary School, concentrates in slab building clay technique as Diane Panazzo looks on. Panazzo (left, middle) lectures to Cheyenne East High School students in the museum’s studios. Richard Page (lower), also from Spring Creek Elementary School, focuses on his project in the studio setting after a lecture in the upstairs museum. (opposite page) Cheyenne East High School student Destinee Godel-Wilder takes notes during the museum tour.
Centennial Complex, 22nd Street and Willett Drive,
Laramie
(307) 766-6622 • www.uwyo.edu/artmuseum,
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ART MUSEUM IS AN ACCREDITED MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF MUSEUMS
