Teaching art in Mexico

The children in Mexico are exhuberent, playful and joyful. Like all children they are inquisitive and curious and this shows up in their art work. This first picture from the primary school in Chacala shows the range of interests they have. Look in the picture gallery for more examples of their work.

This painting by Chacala Primary students is an example of the great creativity that these children show. Christopher's Volcano, America's sunset , Julio's devil, and Juan's orchard, skunk and heiroglyphics show the wide variety of interests they have using their natural environement and things learned in class.

See Story of Las Palmas School below.

M.A.

Posted on Thursday, May 8, 2008 at 08:36AM by Margaret Adams in Mexican Kids | Post a Comment

Painting in Las Palmas

The next week Teresa, her son and I went back with another friend who was visiting. We divided the class into two, fifteen children each – Teresa and her son took the older kids off to play basketball and Diana and I handed out large sheets of paper and big cups of paint and brushes. When each child was set up I told them I wanted them to paint their own faces, using big brushes and lots of paint. They seemed reluctant to start and I asked Isaak what the problem was he said ‘‘They have never seen paint before; they don`t know what to do with it. ``I dipped a big brush into some blue paint and gave it to Pepe, made a circular gesture with my arm and grinned – he grinned back and was off. After a few minutes Diane noticed that two or three children had not started and asked me what to do, I said `don’t do anything, I usually start slowly when I am working, they will catch up. In the next class two or three older girls didn`t want to do portraits, they wanted to do flowers, I said ``no we are doing portraits`` they muttered angrily to one another and one of them started painting a flower.

I was beaming inside, I felt as if I was receiving such a great gift, their excitement was catching. The children were all engaged and playful and we were just there to support them. I know I had a great grin on my face the whole time.

All the children lined up holding their self-portraits for photographs, many comparing theirs to others. But everyone, including the flower child (who now had a self-portrait inside her flower), were happy and pleased with what they had accomplished. Check out their paintings in “The Children of Las Palmas” section of this blog.

We left feeling so happy already talking about what to do next time and looking at options to help out at the school.

My first visit to Las Palmas

Las Palmas : One day in February 2007 I was invited to visit a school on the outskirts of Las Varas, Mexico. I had worked with a teacher, named Isaak, for a few weeks, teaching art in his classroom in Chacala. He invited me and my friend Wendy to visit one morning. We got lost on the first day and gave up. Las Palmas is so isolated from the general town that the road to it was indistinguishable from an entrance off the main road. The next time we took our friend Teresa who spoke Spanish and could ask for directions. We arrived at the town and were nervous to see a single lane bridge with a very large hump in the middle, we couldn’t see the other side – we laughed nervously at one another and I gritted my teeth gunned the engine, sounding the horn all the way over. We collapsed laughing on the other side.

At the school Isaak and his class were waiting, more nervous than we were I think. It was a special day for them, I didn’t find out what they were celebrating, but everyone was in their special uniform. The children performed dances and marches for us. They invited us to play games. Wendy had a great time kicking a ball around and joining in their dances. At lunch time the secondary school next door joined us and the local women in the village contributed food and served all the kids. The lunch was either 5 cents or 10 cents, depending on what they chose. I saw that 3 or 4 children were not in line and asked Isaak about them, he said that they had no money (they had no uniforms either) and would wait until all the children and staff were fed and would get what was left. I gave him a donation and he made sure they got what they wanted. After lunch we sat talking to the children as best we could and they asked us where we came from, Wendy and Teresa were from the States and I was from Canada. They sang us their national anthem and then asked us to sing ours. Wendy and Teresa at least were able to sing together, I had to sing by myself - thank goodness they didn’t ask me to sing “God Save the Queen”. I was struck by how passionate they were. Our anthems sounded dull compared to theirs.

I came away with so many emotions, I felt so joyful at their reception of us and their obvious fun when they played and sang; I felt sorrow at how little they had; and I was inspired and excited about what I could do for them.