As he repeatedly turned over a flat piece of nickel in his hand, Alton Drummer, a sophomore at Rich Central High School, contemplated how the small scrap would become the design he had created in the computer and printed out.
“I was trying to do a star, but it was too simple. To me, I have to make things more complicated,” said the 15-year-old from Country Club Hills.
Drummer, a student in Tom Thompson’s geometry class at the Olympia Fields school, was in unfamiliar territory. Until the day he walked into the Jewelry and Ceramics 2 class, he never had seen a metal saw.
He was growing nervous about the next step, which required sawing the piece and transforming it into the pendant he wanted to give his 8-year-old sister, Aaliyah.
His classmates were in the same situation as they joined the Jewelry 2 class taught by Nancy Roach in a project that combined art with the real-world application of geometry.
“This part I don’t know about,” Drummer said. “I already know how to work geometry. … But this part is the complicated part.”
The two classes shared class time in the school’s Smart Art concept, which crosses departmental boundaries and develops a curriculum matching art with other subjects.
Moving beyond `just art’
The idea of cross-curriculum connections is to have the students go beyond the classroom and use the material, said Lynne Panega, director of teaching and learning for Rich Township District 227.
“A generation ago, the teacher taught a traditional math lesson by presenting in front of the room using a blackboard. Now we are teaching a student by using different avenues and making those cross-curriculum connections,” Panega said.
By remembering a geometry term and using it in a real-world application, such as making a piece of jewelry, the student is more likely to retain it longer, she said.
“They are now looking at that angle and it is exciting, and that helps students connect with learning,” she said.
Before cutting any metal, both classes worked in the math lab using Geometry Sketchpad, a software program that, among other things, allowed the students to manipulate lines into designs.
Thompson went over the basics and let the kids loose–with guidelines.
The art students would have to design a pattern creating a bracelet a little more than 1 inch wide and 6 inches long, while the geometry students worked on one smaller design.
The idea came from Roach, who said she has a strong drive for perfection in her jewelry making. To create better and more precise designs, she turned to math.
“Since I introduced mathematics in the [art] classroom, the artwork has been so much more accurate,” Roach said. “The quality of the work from these high-school students is amazing and quite exquisite.”
Smart Art started two years ago when Roach and Sarah Dubbert, a former math teacher, created an architectural tile project that highlighted geometric principles and how they relate to architecture.
The students designed a blueprint of an architectural tile and Roach instructed them on the techniques of carving the blueprint into a clay tile, thereby integrating the disciplines of art, math and architecture.
Before that, students built wind chimes, which combined art, math and music.
This semester, Roach came up with the jewelry angle after seeing some Native American art and being intrigued by the designs. Then she approached Thompson.
Overcoming intimidation
The experienced art students all have worked with jewelry in a previous class and completed a project: They created a design; cut out the piece; soldered any parts, if necessary; and filed, sanded and polished it.
For them, facing geometry was the intimidating part.
“But once you put some of the lines together and go from there to what you create, it became fairly easy once you got the hang of what you were doing,” said Amanda Alexander, 17, a senior from Matteson.
There was an equal amount of hesitation on the part of the geometry students, Thompson said.
“A third of them were immediately into the idea because they already had some art experience, but most of us really had no idea what was going to be done and [were] not clear what the final project was going to be,” he said.
“Now they are much more into it and understand how the disciplines work together.”
While the students created their pendants, earrings or bracelets, they worked with terms that are found in any geometry textbook and that will be on tests associated with the Illinois Learning Standards.
In Thompson’s class they already were learning about figures and triangles and how they fit into spaces.
“Then we talked about taking a figure and dilating it by increasing or decreasing the size of the object. … This fit right in with how to take a big object and fit it on the bracelet,” he said.
Both classes went on to learn translation, moving in a straight line; reflection, flipping an object 180 degrees; and rotation, spinning or turning an object.
The project was a good way to bring in the geometric terms and concepts, Thompson said.
Teacher is a leader in field
For the past few years, Roach has been a leader in developing cross-curriculum connections and sharing these new ideas, said Panega, who nominated her last year for the state’s Those Who Excel award.
“Nancy Roach has been instrumental in the promotion of interdisciplinary learning. She is a natural at seeing connections between art and other content area,” Panega said.
Roach has taken her act on the road, speaking about Smart Art at conferences. She will be in New Orleans Sunday at the T International Conference sponsored by Texas Instruments. Last month, she spoke at the Illinois Association for Gifted Children conference in Chicago.
Creating culture of excellence
Cross-curriculum course work seems to be on the upswing, said Selma McDonald, Rich Central’s principal.
“We are using it more frequently,” she said. “Most schools are moving in the same direction. We are all pretty much talking the same language, `How do we accomplish the goal of increasing math and reading scores for our young people?'”
Improved test results are just one byproduct of cross-curriculum work.
The projects “are not just specific to academics,” McDonald said. “They create a culture of excellence and a building of self-esteem among the entire school body.”
While the classes worked with the saws, with the art students helping the geometry students, Roach looked at some of the finished pieces of jewelry.
“They turned out wonderful and they are beautiful,” she said.
“I have to say that we accomplished what we were trying to do, reinforcing the math skills and creating clean lines and remarkable pieces.”
