Students at Morley Elementary School in West Hartford have spent the school year connecting with students in Haiti through art.
Principal Ryan Cleary said the idea came from the school’s desire to work on cultural learning in an authentic way.
“Learning about different cultures is part of the West Hartford curriculum and we do a lot of things with the resources we have,” Cleary said. “We wanted to go a step further and learn about another culture through an authentic, real relationship and actually get to know somebody else. We wanted them to find a deeper meaning. We felt this would have a lasting impression.”
The school used a grant from the Foundation for West Hartford Public Schools to purchase the technology needed to make this possible. The project that came out of the grant was an art exchange.
“We wrote the grant thinking about how we’re going to learn about another culture that’s in a different part of the world and speaks a different language,” Cleary said. “We went to art. Art being a visual medium is a great way for kids to communicate.”
In their art classes, students would create the usual art they might during any given school year. But adding on to that, the students would create video lessons with demonstrations and as little language as possible to teach the students at the Education Center in Deschapelles, Haiti, who speak Haitian Creole, to do the same work they did.
“The Haitian kids would make the same art projects that we did,” Cleary said. “They would reciprocate and send things back. That’s what we’ve been doing and it’s been incredible.”
All of the art work that was created by the Morley students and the students in Haiti will be auctioned off at a silent auction on May 16 at Morley School. The money raised by the Haitian art will be returned to Haiti and the money raised by the Morley School will help the school continue its connection with Haiti.
Cleary said through their simple exchange they learned a lot about Haiti.
“We learned a lot about their resources,” Cleary said. “We found out that for the kids in the school it was the first time they had ever used scissors. That was a bit of learning for our kids.”
Nybol Bona, a seven-year-old second-grader, accompanied Cleary to a recent board of education meeting to talk about the experience.
In her art classroom, while making a pendant that has a Creole word on one side and the English translation of the word on another, she said she learned a lot.
“We learned they speak Creole and we learned they don’t have much art supplies,” Bona said, who added they realized they are more fortunate in West Hartford.
Joey Fritz, an eight-year-old second-grader, said he was surprised to hear that the school in Haiti was different than theirs in terms of how it was set up.
“I learned their school had no walls,” Fritz said. “They don’t have enough money to afford their own school supplies.”
It was also a thrill for the students to send their art to Haiti only to see it appear in the videos and photos that the Haitian students returned to them.
“I saw mine on the table,” said Carrie Nelson, an eight-year-old second-grader. “It was weird to see something I made in West Hartford all the way in Haiti.”
Erica Stinziani, Morley’s art teacher, said art is a great way for students with language barriers to communicate.
“Art is a universal language,” Stinziani said. “We tried to use limited words when we made the videos so they can see what they’re doing. The kids loved seeing what their sister school made. But they also learned about their daily life, what their school looked like and what was different. But we also studied the things that were the same. It brought something very far away closer.”
Cleary said this won’t be the end of the connection with Haiti. They’ve received another grant from Fund For Teachers that will allow them to send five Morley educators to Haiti for a week in June to meet with the Education Center.
“We have teachers who became really interested,” Cleary said. “They are going to down there and will try to spread their knowledge, talk with the teachers and learn about how the school operates. It’s going to increase their cultural awareness and back at Morley they can be a primary resource for our kids.”
