2 of Georgia’s top art teachers are in Harris County. How they’re ‘weaving’ STEAM into lessons
Leave it to a 10-year-old to succinctly summarize the impact of excellent art teachers.
“I always thought art was just drawing and painting,” Emma O’Brien, a fifth-grader at Creekside Intermediate School, told the Ledger-Enquirer. “I never knew you could use it to help you learn in different classes. That’s very cool and very exciting for me. … They’ve helped me express myself better.”
Emma was talking about Harris County School District art teachers Virginia McCullough and Florence Barnett.
During the Georgia Art Education Association’s annual conference, conducted online this month, McCullough was named the GAEA Elementary Grades Teacher of the Year, and Barnett receive the GAEA Distinguished Service Inside the Professional Award.
Emma agrees with the judges. She was in McCullough’s class at New Mountain Hill Elementary School and now takes Barnett’s class at Creekside.
“They’re very good teachers, and they explain a lot of things very well,” she said. “They’re very similar. … They’re very nice people and very kind.”
Barnett and McCullough see their roles in educating children as important as the core academic subjects. That’s why they are helping HCSD’s effort to become a STEAM-certified school district, meaning science, technology, engineering, arts and math are seamlessly integrated into lessons.
“The arts actually will attract students that may not have proclivities to science or mathematics or feel confident in those disciplines,” McCullough said. “… That’s what I feel like is my job: to make them feel confident in their creative and innovative spirit and skill set.”
And they see their roles as more important during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It really helps you kind of get out of yourself,” Barnett said. “At this time, it’s therapeutic. … It kind of unleashes other things. It calms you, and it collects you.”
Not a classroom but a studio
McCullough calls her classroom an “art studio” because there aren’t any traditional desks and chairs. Instead, the students stand at rectangular tables to do their art.
The message she hopes that environment conveys: This classwork is different but still important.
“We don’t have time to kind of mess around,” she said. “We’re serious in here. We’re working just like they work in their academic disciplines.”
Each of the approximately 400 students has a weekly 50-minute art period.
“I tell them they’re already artists,” she said. “… If they feel like they’re real artists, innovators and creative thinkers starting in kindergarten, that carries through their entire academic career.”
McCullough helped NMHE become the fourth STEAM-certified elementary school in Georgia.
During the L-E’s visit, the students collaborated on a group project about waves. They are comparing the painting “Great Wave” by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai with the painting “Lifeboat” by Columbus artist Bo Bartlett.
This project connects to the students’ units about wave energy and climate change in their science classes.
“What we really try to achieve is the transdisciplinary approach,” McCullough said, “weaving the disciplines together in a meaningful, relevant way that has real-world application.”
In addition to the Chromebook HCSD provided for every student, equipping them for remote learning, NMHE gave each of its students a sketchbook.
“One of the problems we had when we sent the students home at the beginning of the pandemic, we weren’t sure if they were equipped with the materials that they needed to continue to create at home,” McCullough said. “We didn’t even know if they had paper to work on, and we wanted everyone to have equitable materials.”
A partnership with the Bo Bartlett Center at Columbus State University will give each of the 80 NMHE second-graders an art kit to use at home.
McCullough enforces CDC guidelines about not sharing materials, which are disinfected between classes. Although HCSD doesn’t require elementary students to wear masks, they must remain in assigned pods for the purpose of contact tracing.
She divides art teachers in two categories: those who consider themselves artists who teach their craft to children and those who consider themselves educators who use art to teach children.
“I’m always creating and doing, especially with the kids, but my true heart is an educator,” she said. “My Zen, my happy place, is elementary students moving around and creating and creating a mess and working with real materials and coming up with ideas and developing their aesthetic. That’s my happy place.”
NMHE principal Mark Gilreath said McCullough’s teaching style is all about seeing students prosper.
“She wants to take it out of the textbook, take it off the dry-erase board and put it in their hands, make it something that’s meaningful for the students, and not all teachers can do that,” he said.
McCullough has been teaching art in Harris County for 15 years. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Georgia, her master’s degree from Columbus State University and is working on her doctorate at CSU.
‘We art stronger together’
The bulletin board outside of Barnett’s classroom declares, “We Art Stronger Together,” a play on words from the school’s slogan this year.
Art is an outlet, Barnett said, building confidence along with creativity.
“It’s another way of expressing oneself,” she said. “It’s a language without having to talk. … Teaching it and facilitating it, that is really fun and rewarding.”
Barnett won the GAEA Middle Grades Teacher of the Year award in 2018. She has been teaching art in Harris County for 11 years. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Binghamton University in New York and her master’s degree from Marywood University in Pennsylvania.
During the L-E’s visit to Barnett’s classroom, 15 fifth-graders were doing art projects involving negative space and Zentangle, a meditative drawing with patterns. They were learning the concept of tessellation, a mosaic of geometric shapes covering a plane without gaps or overlaps.
In addition to these state awards for teaching art, HCSD has shined this month for doing art.
Among 106 entries from 13 school districts, HCSD students won 12 of the 19 awards Nov. 12 at the third annual Art Gala for the Biologically Inclined. The blind-judged contest is produced by the Work-Based Learning Program at Harris County High School and the Hughston Foundation, inviting Georgia middle school and high school students to submit STEAM-infused artwork.
“That shows how cohesive we are,” Barnett said. “For decades now, the art department in Harris County has been just phenomenal.”
Barnett credits retired HCSD art teachers Cathy Chambless, Juanita Barrows and Amy Patterson for mentoring her and developing the district’s art program.
“They set it up for us,” she said, “and we’re just kind of continuing that vision.”
Enforcing CDC guidelines in her class means students sit at individual tables separated by transparent dividers. Masks must remain on except during breaks. Hands are sanitized before and after class.
“Instead of doing various sizes of artworks, we are strictly working with sketchbooks,” she said. “At first, we started with just pencil, and then whatever materials that they would bring in. Eventually, we learned a system of sanitizing, so we were able to eventually begin painting and using scissors and other materials.”
Creekside principal Lindie Snyder said Barnett is “very passionate about art, and she believes that everyone has an artist inside of them. It doesn’t matter if it’s a stick figure or it’s a Van Gogh lookalike. She brings that out.”
This story was originally published November 25, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
