Arts for Learning Teaching Artist Yanira Collado is working with high school students from Coral Gables Senior High to launch a school year portion of A4L’s innovative ArtWorks internship program.  Through a partnership with Miami-Dade County Public Schools’ Honors and Executive Internship Program, students learn crucial job skills in and through the arts.  Here Yanira writes about some of the changes she has noticed in her students over the past few months.  

I am so very pleased with the direction my ArtWorks class is taking.  When I first met the students, they were very shy and hesitated to make even little leaps in their technical skills. They never spoke about their work or others. So I decided to change gears and make them read and write about art.

At first this came as a surprise and a disappointment to them. “Man, Miss Y, artists don’t write.” They were stunned when I read them the writings of other artists.  I moved towards teaching the students on creating art based on research. We started watching documentaries on current social issues pivotal to their interests. I could slowly see them unfolding and developing. They starting losing fear and became very opinionated in class.

We recently had our mid-term exhibition. The students were all shocked to see press there. The reporter interviewed all the students.  The very next week my students told me they were grateful I made them do all this research, writing and reading on art.  “Yeah, Miss Y, if you hadn’t made us do all this, we would have nothing to say to the reporter”.

This week, we moved into sculpture based on observation to improve our drawing skills. I am happy to say that they were very willing to try this approach. They put up fewer walls even when they found it painfully difficult. I am truly grateful for the opportunity to give young people tools and to find ways to make acquiring these tools an emotionally safe practice for them.

Self portrait sculpture