Teachers back in the classroom to learn art skills
Given the fact that most teachers spend approximately eight hours, five days a week in a classroom managing as many as forty children for about nine months out of the year, we thought that the educators would avoid the classroom every chance they get. But as News 5’s Ann Marie Williams found out today, some teachers are so dedicated to improving the skills they pass on to our children, they’re spending part of their summer learning how to make school fun.
Damian Perdomo, Art Teacher, S.J.C.
“We’re doing the very basic hand building techniques. There’s about five or six of them that we’ll go over during this week, and they’ll be able to utilise each technique…they could decide what kind of pot they want to do and which technique would be suitable to do the pot.”
Ann-Marie Williams, Reporting
Over the next twelve days eleven teachers from the Belize District will learn various techniques in pottery making.
The programme is being offered by the National Centre for Art Education and Cultural Understanding at St. John’s College and aims at equipping teachers with introducing drawing, painting and ceramic techniques.
Damian Perdomo
“We’re working with clay and we’ll learn how to go about locating a clay source, testing it to see if it is suitable for pottery and if it comes out that it’s good, then how to go about cleaning the clay so that it’s good to use for pottery.”
Eloise Coleman is a teacher at Libertad Methodist School. She’s travelled from the north to improve her craft.
Eloise Coleman, Teacher, Libertad Methodist School
“I came to the workshop because I was curious. I did art in Teacher’s College and I wanted to see if it’s something like that. Miss Eva Thompson used to teach me art and so I’d like to know more so that my children can do better, because I see that children like hands-on things.”
Judith Reyes, Teacher, Burrell Boom Methodist
“Today is actually slabbing. This is the slabbing technique and what we do is we take the slab then we roll it into this cylindrical shape and then we join the edges in and we can make vases, cups, mugs and so on with this one.”
On Monday the women were taught the coil building technique, a skill once used by the Maya. The ancient technique is now being used to make modern and contemporary masterpieces.
But ceramics weren’t the only thing being taught today. Upstairs a group of twelve other teachers were with Damian’s mother, Michelle Perdomo, creating patterns with things they picked up outside.
Michelle Perdomo, Art Teacher, S.J.C.
“So the first thing they did was go outside and collect two or three objects. It could be stones, leaves, bottles caps, whatever they could find on the ground. And they brought it in and by placing those objects on a piece of paper and using spray paint, I showed them how easy it is to create a design. So they moved their objects around and they use spray paint and within minutes they had a very impressionistic, soft, beautiful nature study.”
Some teachers created their own view of nature, this time using a brush.
Michelle Perdomo
“I showed them how by mixing the two neighbouring colours together they’ll get a second colour. And then they use their brush and just experiment with the brush, not worry about what they’re gonna paint, but just experiment using the brush on the side, tip, trying to get fine wavy lines or whatever and to create this time a different type of pattern that’s gonna be lines and dots and squiggles and whatever.”
Tomorrow the teacher will work with lines to create various shapes and figures. Ann-Marie Williams for News 5.
The twenty-three primary school teachers attending the art workshop paid a small fee to defray the cost of the art supplies. The workshop ends on July twelfth.
