Building a Foundation for Making + Design @ Hillbrook

One aspect of Hillbrook that has not changed much in the last 80 years is the school’s dedication to the Arts and Crafts. This dedication is seen in the amount of time students are given in their schedule to make and create, and in the amount of spaces we dedicate to creativity on campus. Beginning in Junior Kindergarten,  every Hillbrook student spends several hours a week in the school’s makerspaces for wood, music, ceramic and the fine arts. Signature projects in each grade introduce students to the skills and mindsets of real artists, such as measurement, composition and material science.

Having students create art that invites questions creates a natural bridge to science/math/humanities that resides in the emotional selves of our students. Making art is a form of constructionism that communicates concepts and ideas while allowing students to use their heads, hands and hearts in novel and inspiring ways.

The construction of art, whether on paper or in 3-dimensional space acts as a valuable form of assessing student understanding,  it makes thinking visible (Ritchhart, Church and Morrison, 2011). Making is also really good for brain development at all ages . Exposure to the Arts early gives Hillbrook students more skills and tools with which to flourish in middle school. Studies on the effects of students constructing and making have shown that when students construct their own physical models, they gain access to content via multimodal (visual, kinesthetic, auditory, written) representations of that content (Jackson, et. al. 2008, Dukerich, 2015). In the book, The Hand by neurologist Frank Wilson at the University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco, Wilson builds an argument for why hands-on learning is so important to thinking, and understanding by referencing the somatosensory homunculus map. Models which engage the visual, auditory and tactile parts of students, therefore are more effective in aiding mathematical, scientific or artistic literacy.

Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), daughter of the controversial poet Lord Byron and the first computer programmer, coined the term “poetical science” to describe the fruitful merger of science, mathematics and the human inclination towards beauty, also known as art. Today we use the acronym STEAM to describe the addition of art to the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math fields, but we have far to go before we realize Ada’s vision of seeing art as having an essential role in doing great science. Even with today’s movements to teach STEM as STEAM, the image of the artist and the scientist are mostly polarized in mainstream culture. Nevertheless, the two perspectives and practices of art and science have lived comfortably side by side throughout most of history, each informing the other symbiotically. Some have even pointed out that the greatest minds of science and those seen as successful in life in general have been polymaths, with passions and hobbies in the Arts outside of their creative genius in math, science or technology (Milgram et.al., 1997, Root-Bernstein, et.al. 2008).

At Hillbrook, the emphasis on the Arts in lower school builds an important foundation for middle school students as they are able to apply the skills and tools they learn to their academic subjects and beyond. Confidence using tools, materials and ones own creativity are super powers that all Hillbrook students are fortunate enough to be asked to share and celebrate on a daily basis.