Teacher Report: Summer Workshops in Education at the Museum

Two museums. Three hours. 14 teachers. Lots of rocks. On Saturday, August 6, teachers from around the region learned how to integrate the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History [1] into their curricula in our Geology of Art workshop. The day started with a lecture on the life cycle of rocks [2] by David Saja, PhD,curator and head of mineralogy at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Teachers then investigated geological specimens throughout the museum and discussed hardness scale. At the art museum, teachers explored the notion that rocks are beautiful as they viewed a variety of rocks throughout our Near Eastern, Greek, and Roman Art collections. They discussed the marble used in Rodin’s The Thinker [3], the stones used in the 1916 building, and the hardness of the rocks used in stele carvings. Workshop feedback was very positive. During the evaluations, one teacher commented: “You’ve modeled an interesting way of asking students to apply their science knowledge and take it to the next level.” [4] Two weeks later, 14 foreign language teachers toured the permanent collection, enjoyed an Art to Go demonstration, and played an art-infused foreign language game which can be used in the classroom to build conversation skills. Both workshops exposed teachers to strategies to bring art into their classrooms and are scheduled to be offered again next year. Contact Dale Hilton @ dhilton@clevelandart.org [5] for more information.