The 2nd graders in Mr. Hrin's art appreciation class were riveted. But it wasn't the suspense of the artwork's story that excited them. It was something else that thrilled them.

Mr. Hrin began class by showing a painting he had previously introduced to the students (Right). He then asked what word we had used to describe the boy’s attitude. “He is engrossed in the book”, declared a little seven year old girl, using a word that Mr. Hrin had introduced to them previously. As Mr. Hrin had explained, the boy wasn’t just “focused”, but he was focused on something that he was really interested in… and there was a word for that: "engrossed."

As we proceeded to "read" more of the “story” of the picture, Mr. Hrin kept introducing to us words that were more meaningful than the ones we thought of. Where at first the class came up with words like "feather," "armor," and "horse," to describe details of the knight, Mr. Hrin gave us the terms “plume,” “plate mail,” and “warhorse.” Every time Mr. Hrin would ask us what word best described a certain detail, we were on the edge of our seats to hear what he would say, and what new word we'd learn.

As I sat observing the class, I started thinking about Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller from the play, The Miracle Worker. Annie wants to teach the blind, deaf, and savage six-year-old Helen the concept of language, because words could be "her eyes to everything in the world outside her, and inside too." (SPOILER) When Helen suddenly grasps that words are concepts that refer to reality, she eagerly gropes around wanting to know the words that name everything she notices in the world around her. 

Like Helen, Mr. Hrin's students were eager to learn the new words that would help them understand the world before them. No wonder they were engrossed in this artwork.


*A Boy Reading an Adventure Story by Norman Rockwell

Arm Wrestling and Art Appreciation

The highlight of yesterday’s art appreciation class was an arm wrestling contest between me and one of my 2nd graders. After the contest was over, all the students eagerly rushed back to their seats to write down on their worksheets what arm wrestling had taught them about the painting we were looking at.

What did arm wrestling have to do with art? What new insights into our artwork did they gain?

The artwork for this class period featured two burly blacksmiths competing in a horseshoe-making contest. I asked the class what the blacksmiths' attitude was to their work. “Focused!” was the unanimous answer they gave me. But that wasn’t enough. I asked them to provide visual evidence
--“clues” that showed that the two men looked focused. 
(Can you pick out some clues?)

The students found a couple of good clues, but I wanted them to notice and understand more subtle details of “focus”. They pointed out the men’s direct gazes and the muscles strained in effort. Those were great clues, but there were two more that I wanted them to see. For one subtle clue, I circled the two men’s mouths. “Why did you circle the mouths?” one student asked. They didn’t quite see a tensed mouth as an apparent sign of focus. For the other clue, I wanted them to see that the men were concentrating so much they were ignoring the shouts of the crowd. But rather than simply explain this, I decided to have them experience it. 

I had one of the students come up to compete against me in an arm wrestling contest. I asked the rest of the class to be an enthusiastic crowd shouting encouragement. As soon as the contest started, the "crowd" did their job. My young competitor looked up at the cheering, and losing focus on the competition, I made sure he lost. “Now,” I instructed him, “Let’s do this again, and I want you to ignore the crowd, and really concentrate.” He turned away from the crowd, stared down at our tensed arms, and tightened his mouth. The students saw a mirror image of the blacksmiths’ mouths. And when the students started cheering, he ignored them and stayed focused. As soon as he defeated me with his superior focus, the students excitedly rushed back to their seats, excited to write down the two new visual clues for "focus" they'd just experienced.