Each year, the Village School of North Bennington’s sixth grade class has a portion of their curriculum dedicated to public art, a powerful tool to convey information and ideas. This year’s piece, The VSNB Pollinator Project continues its environmental justice theme and introduces the idea of food security. Now in its second year, sixth grade students moved from studying the different types of animal pollinators to behaviors an average person could adopt to help pollinators survive in the face decline.
Working from photographs of pollinator-friendly plant species appropriate for our area, students sketched their subject and added color, paying special attention to detail. These images were then printed and cut for a poster layout with text.
It’s important to note that this project began with drawings and layout samples created by students in the classroom before the COVID-19 school closure and was continued online, broken down into phases of research, writing and editing text, choosing color palettes, and evaluating the final drafts for publication.
-Gabrielle Rynes
Teaching Artist with the Vermont Arts Exchange
