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Hazelwood West Middle Cross-Curricular Class Combines Art and Technology
Hazelwood West Middle School students visited Chicago in early December to view the city’s architecture as part of a cross-curricular class that combines art and technology. Here, they stop for a photograph before an image of one of the city’s celebrities, Oprah Winfrey.
Elaine Eversgerd and Chris Weil have collaborated many times for student projects at Hazelwood West Middle School, but their current partnership may be the most important one yet.
Eversgerd, one of the school’s art teachers, and Weil, the Gateway to Technology teacher, have joined forces to offer their academic excellence students a more rigorous program of study.
During second trimester, the students studied renowned American architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings. Using Wright’s work as inspiration, students designed one-quarter scale floor plans, followed by three-dimensional, foam core representation of the design. Next, they laid out interior designs of their homes in either one-, two- or three-point perspectives. St. Louis has two Wright homes. Eversgerd and Weil plan on taking the students on a field trip to at least one of them in the near future.
“We wanted to give them a hands-on, real-life application to make connections to the real world, so we thought Chicago would let them experience a different city, architectural design, technology, industry and the art world.
In early December, the students visited the Windy City, where they visited many architectural wonders in person. They visited the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Art Institute of Chicago and participated in a two-hour architectural walking tour. Students raised money for the trip through individual fundraisers, drawings during the school’s spirit week in the fall, by asking classmates to pay $1 each to play sports in the gym during lunch periods and Weil received a $500 grant from Sam’s Club®.
“Chicago was amazing,” said eighth-grade student Andrea Gann. “I loved all the stuff we did. We did the walking tour in the snow. The art institute was really cool, too. Most of the buildings were built in the 1940s and they were made of terracotta, which they used to try to make the buildings fireproof.”
“I liked going up in the Willis Tower (a.k.a. the Sears Tower – 1,451 feet tall) and you could see the whole city,” said classmate Emily Alberts. “There was a parking garage there that looks like a big flower. The designer made it that way so he or she could fit more cars into the garage.”
“These kids were also able to learn real-life skills – time management, large group skills, responsibility and co-habitation with more than one other person,” Weil said.
During the first trimester, the students in the class delved into a physics unit. Students had to design and build a model roller coaster and apply key physics terms– including gravity, mass, friction, g-forces as well as art terms, such as – line, color, shape, texture, form – to the overall process. In addition, each roller coaster layout had a theme.
During the third trimester, the student perspective drawings will continue and will add a stained glass component so students can create their own stained glass. Eversgerd referred to this portion of the joint program as “very linear and very geometric.”
Eversgerd and Weil said the pairing works because the curricula for both classes overlap at several subjects – science, math and architecture.
“We wanted to challenge students and make our classes more rigorous so we put Gateway to Technology and Art together to teach art, art history, technology, physics, architectural design and engineering to help motivate students into becoming productive members of our future society,” Eversgerd said. “We also wanted to guide career paths and encourage high school decision-making opportunities.” (story courtesy of Hazelwood Communications Dept.)
