We are tasked with providing students with the knowledge they need for a successful future, but we are often limited to lessons that are too cursory or dated to be relevant. Art educators need to meet this moment by designing innovative curriculums that tackle contemporary issues and build advocacy in students. With this goal in mind, I developed an Eco Art curriculum over the last two years and built an outdoor classroom. This experience allowed my inner-city students to foster a relationship with nature through art.
Teens today spend less time outdoors than any generation in history and are in vital need of more interaction with the natural world. Students spend four to seven minutes a day outdoors, while spending, on average, seven and a half hours looking at a screen (see Resource). Coined Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv, the lack of exposure to the natural world is having devastating consequences on our students, including increased anxiety, depression, attention issues, obesity, and a disassociation with the natural world. As art educators, we have a responsibility to design innovative curriculums that can encourage students to take on this problem.
Although addressing the challenges young people face in what we teach can seem daunting, we must look at it as an opportunity to create a curriculum that is timely, relevant, and purposeful. We are tasked with providing students with the knowledge they need for a successful future, but we are often limited to lessons that are too cursory or dated to be relevant. Art educators need to meet this moment by designing innovative curriculums that tackle contemporary issues and build advocacy in students.
With this goal in mind, I developed an Eco Art curriculum over the last two years and built an outdoor classroom. This experience allowed my inner-city students to foster a relationship with nature through art.
Eco Art is broadly defined as art that utilizes natural materials in its creation and/or uses nature as its subject matter. I developed a class that uses nature as its primary subject while also having an interdisciplinary approach. Science, history, and literature are integral parts of the class. These corollary subjects are needed to understand and address issues like climate change and the loss of ecological diversity. I hope this class can be a first step in studentsʼ environmental advocacy, educating them about the power of nature to improve their health and mobilizing them to act on our current environmental crises.
Once the curriculum had been set, I designed a permanent outdoor learning space to serve as our classroom. I designed the space to integrate with the natural environment on the school grounds and to be a place where students could sit comfortably while creating art. It is simple and accessible.
Working with school officials, funding was procured to build the classroom in time for the inaugural Eco Art class. This space helped me fulfill one of my primary goals with this curriculum: allowing students to spend the time they need in the outdoors, interacting with nature when making their art.
Projects created during Eco Art were varied, but all were designed to help students develop environmental awareness, a sense of ecological justice, and the power to create change.
Students foraged natural materials while learning about social justice and the history of the indigenous people of our area, the Potawatomi. They used science to create cyanotype portraits in the sun, which helped them develop their ecological awareness. They annotated the nature writings of Leopold, Thoreau, and Muir while integrating art history movements like Romanticism and the Hudson River School. Students continually explored natural materials to use while learning about conservation and the natural sciences. Historical accounts were also used to help connect to contemporary issues like climate change and the loss of ecological diversity.
The culmination of their learning was a trimester-long basket weaving project using natural materials. Students were tasked with foraging the material and weaving the basket using a traditional method. At first, my inner-city students thought this task was impossible and struggled to realize the material they needed was all around them. Students slowly began the task and, through determination, made baskets that represented their community and our history. Students spent time outdoors outside of class to accomplish this task, while interacting with nature on a simple, purposeful level.
If art educators are to teach students in a way that responds to the challenges of living in the 21st century, we must innovate by developing classes that address the issues facing students. These curriculums must help create a sense of purpose and call to action for our students. My motivation for creating the Eco Art curriculum was two-fold: to address the ecological challenges facing Earth such as climate change, and the health problems facing students due to their lack of time in nature. In the end, I hope to encourage students to advocate for the future they deserve.
Gregg Stevens is an art teacher at Loy Norrix High School/Kalamazoo Public Schools in Kalamazoo, Michigan. StevensGE@kalamazoopublicschools.net
Responding: Interpret intent and meaning in artistic work.
National Recreation and Park Association: Children in Nature
Art teachers share new and exciting art-making experiences in and outside the art room. Young students collaborate to paint a hanging cardboard butterfly installation, elementary students use everyday objects to create illuminating bookshelf dioramas, middle-school students use 3D-scanning technology to print lifelike portraits, high-school students address contemporary issues while creating in an outdoor classroom, and more.
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