Each day, projects in music, woodworking, visual and performing arts, and physical education add context to what children are studying in mathematics, social studies, science and language arts. In the Lower School, both grown-ups and children refer to these courses as “specials,” and in these classrooms, creativity reigns.
K–5 specials are strong curricular components, fully integrated with the academic curriculum. In these fun and challenging classrooms, students ignite and develop particular interests and talents. Specialists may be among the first adults to recognize children differentiating themselves—as cellists, sculptors, runners, actors or artisans. Because the specialists teach the same students over a number of years, they guide those children to new levels of skill and competence. These educators—talented in their own crafts—each provide a unique venue, and a rich experience. As they gain skill, children gain lots of confidence. Listen to what the students have to say.
Visual Art
I prefer making three-dimensional projects to creating art on paper. For instance, when we were studying China, we sculpted dragons out of clay. We molded them from our imaginations, and they looked like they could come alive and walk away! We used lots of tools to get the features and details right, and then Ms. Butler dried them in her kiln. Art is one of my very favorite subjects, because we get to express our feelings and use all of our creativity. We also learn about different art all over the world. After reading One Hen, about a boy in Africa, we all designed our own kente cloths in class.
—Thea C., Grade 5
Sandy Butler sees all her students as inherently creative. In her class, students paint, draw, sculpt, sketch, cut and craft; they feel supported and comfortable expressing ideas. Sandy expresses her own artistic voice in her Somerville studio; she has exhibited locally and nationally. Affiliated with the Eclipse Mill Artists Association, Sandy is a self-proclaimed “artistic explorer,” working in a variety of media, from weaving to pottery, monotypes to watercolors.
Doing our self-portraits, I learned that shading is really important (you can rub a tissue on a pencil drawing to shade), and I learned that you can determine where your eyes and mouth go on the page using the width of your hand. Getting the nostrils right is really hard, because they’re such an odd shape. I’ve always loved art, but I wouldn’t always try something that was new or that I wasn’t good at. Ms. Butler helps me open up to things I wouldn’t have tried. I have a canvas at home, and I like to paint nature scenes—I’ve painted frogs, and a giant apple. I might not like art as much as I do without Ms. Butler.
—Baz D., Grade 4
I want to be an artist who paints portraits when I grow up. I like to draw people and houses best. At home I sketch, but in Ms. Butler’s class I always use lots of color. She has so many different art supplies, and you can use anything you want! I like using paint or crayons best. We did a project on Pablo Picasso, like his cubist paintings, where we painted our own heads, one part from straight on and one from the side. The hardest part for me is painting the lips; sometimes they go too far to one side or the other.
—Jordyn D., Grade 2
“I rely on interdisciplinary teaching, where students learn a subject from several different perspectives. Collaborating with my colleagues, and teaching art through the subjects students are learning in other classrooms, is a great opportunity. I take what the students know and use art to further their knowledge about a topic, or to help them express a personal idea about that subject.”
—Sandy Butler
Performing Art
Eleza Moyer has taught performing art at Milton for ten years. She helps her students find their voices and feel comfortable onstage. Students learn to dance in Grade 3, grow as speakers in Grade 4, and put it all together in the Grade 5 Play. Outside of Milton, Eleza has acted, directed and produced theater at the Footlight Club in Jamaica Plain, where she is the artistic planning director.
Ms. Moyer teaches us to dance and act, and we learn about turning stories into music or plays. In almost every class we have to invert something, which means we take a known story and turn it into something else. For instance, we had to use the plot of “The Three Little Pigs” and come up with another version that included different characters and a different setting—a new way of presenting the idea. Sometimes we’ll sit in a circle and come up with a story together, everyone adding a new part. Sometimes the stories get a little wacky, but we try to stay
on topic, and they’re always funny!
—James M., Grade 4
Ms. Moyer taught us that it’s OK to be “strong and wrong,” which means she wants us to use our voices and speak up. She would rather have us be wrong than be too shy or nervous to say what we think. In Oral Interpretation we learn about projecting our voices. We’ve also learned how to pair movements with our words—to express ourselves in more ways than one. You become comfortable onstage, and it helps knowing that all your classmates support you and want you to do well. I’ve learned that failure is part of succeeding, and it’s part of trying new things. It’s not always about being right.
—Isabel A., Grade 5
“Without risk, there is no reward. I tell my students I’d rather them be strong and wrong, meaning if you hold back for fear of making a mistake you will never grow, never learn. Go big! If something doesn’t work, we’ll fix it together.”
—Eleza Moyer
Phys Ed
Scott Green wants his students to be active and have fun. Over a five-year span, he sees his students grow physically and mentally, and he appreciates how their gross motor skills improve. The reward, he says, is hearing his students say, “Look, Mr. Green, I can do it!” Scott plays basketball in several leagues and enjoys pickup games, as well. He coaches basketball in both the Middle and the Upper School.
Mr. Green has helped me try new things that I wouldn’t have known I liked. This fall we played football for the first time, and I really liked it. He encourages the boys and the girls to play in every activity that we do, and we’re very active in that class all the time. We play in the gym when it’s cold out, but in the spring and fall we get to have class outside on the fields. In track last year, Mr. Green taught us that if you run with your toes, and not flat-footed, you can run faster.
—James M., Grade 4
My favorite part of P.E. is in January when we skate on the ice rink. Even though some people already know how to skate, we all start with the same drills—stopping drills, skating backward or in a circle. We also have free skate, or we play tag. Mr. Green sometimes pairs someone who skates faster with someone who skates slower, so you can skate together and teach each other. In P.E. you build on skills and get better every year. Like in Kindergarten you might learn about kicking a soccer ball, but by third grade you actually play soccer games against each other.
—Henry S., Grade 3
“I know a class was successful when my students are smiling, laughing, out of breath and sweating. While I want P.E. class to be different from playing on an athletic team, I want to spark an interest. I get excited when students who are not particularly athletic or interested in sports have fun participating in a game, and then choose to try that activity outside of school.”
—Scott Green
Woodworking
Phoebe Ryles, a carpenter with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters for six years, joined the Milton faculty this fall. Her students, in Kindergarten through Grade 3, master simple tools, improve dexterity, refine motor skills, and gain confidence. They learn to apply math skills to complete the creative, complex projects that they imagine, design, plan and build.
I like getting to choose what to make, like a puzzle, or a boat. I also like the sense of history in woodworking—learning how people used to make things out of wood, how they cut down logs and polished the wood until it was smooth. In class I’ve learned how to make things smooth, cut curved lines, make sounds with scraps of wood, like making a drum or a guitar with rubber bands. I like Ms. Ryles’s perky spirit. She lets us use paint, dowels, fabrics—she lets us go crazy! She teaches us the right drills and tools to use, so we can make our projects really successful.
—Eric P., Grade 2
In woodworking we’ve made a box that opened at the top, and I’m making a dump truck right now. Both of them use hinges. I think the hardest part about woodworking is cutting straight lines, which is important. Ms. Ryles helps us figure things out, though. She knows so much about woodworking, but she doesn’t just solve the problems for us—she asks us how we think we might fix something, and we come up with ideas. In her class I’ve learned how to use a ruler to measure fractions, too—like marking 5/8 of an inch. She has a gigantic ruler painted on her wall that we use for our projects.
—Abe L., Grade 3
“One of the beautiful things about woodworking is that there are no tricks and no shortcuts—only experience and patiently acquired skill. Young children don’t know what is difficult and what is easy in my class, and I try not to tell them. Since they don’t know what they ‘can’t do,’ they are willing to tackle anything.”
—Phoebe Ryles
Music
In Sadie Mayes’s music room, you might find kindergarteners keeping the rhythm on xylophones, or third graders practicing pitch matching and breath control, or fifth graders composing and performing original songs. Sadie’s students learn plenty of new facts while they develop skills and explore how creative they can be. An accomplished singer and pianist, Sadie sings in the Dedham Choral Society and has been teaching at Milton since 2006.
Music gives me a chance to sing and be loud. (Being that loud at home isn’t always a good idea.) I play the drums, which I like because the rhythm of the drums powers the whole song—it sets the foundation. My dad played in the drum corps, so I like sharing that with him. It’s interesting to me how people use music in different ways, too. For instance, when soldiers were going to battle in the Civil War, they played the snare drum and the bugle. And people tend to play the same traditional songs at weddings. The way people use and enjoy music is interesting to me, and in class we learn about so many different types of music, around the world.
—Ben S., Grade 5
Each year in music, we build on what we’ve learned. You start learning about rhythms and patterns using xylophones and recorders, and then you learn about more sophisticated parts of music, like the history of classical composers—Bach, Mozart—and the role of music in civil rights and social change. Ms. Mayes has taught us about how people used music during slavery and segregation. When we learned the recorder, I thought it would be hard to play, but Ms. Mayes makes it fun. We played “Recorder Karate,” where we would earn a new belt with each challenging song we performed, from white belt to black belt!
—Sadie P., Grade 5
“Students learn best when we give them a dilemma around which they can develop questions—questions they have to explore to solve the problem. Once they have the questions, they’re on a quest to discover the answers, develop a plan, and tackle the problem. They have to try things, and fail at times. It’s my job to help guide them through the process—not to feed them answers.”
—Sadie Mayes