Drawing Connections

How do you teach diversity when your school district is no longer diverse? As an art teacher in a mostly black magnet school, I found the answer at my public library.

The eastern shoreline of Lake Michigan would seem an unlikely backdrop for a successful experiment in teaching the virtues of racial integration. But a four-year artistic collaboration between schools in Benton Harbor and the city's public library has delivered an important lesson in tolerance for more than a thousand elementary school children in cities along the St. Joseph River.

For the last two decades, Benton Harbor, a predominantly black city in southwestern Michigan, has been cut off from its affluent and mostly white neighbors — St. Joseph to the south, and the bedroom communities of Lakeshore and Bridgman further down. As described in the book The Other Side of the River (Doubleday, 1998) by Alex Kotlowitz, its people are not only ignorant about each other, but also intolerant. As a result, they tend to be deeply suspicious, isolated, and uptight. Judging from this history, it would seem a daunting task to bring the children of these polarized areas together. But that's exactly what we did.

How did Benton Harbor Public Library end up at the center of this ambitious integration effort? It started in September 1998, when Assistant Children's Librarian Ann Murphy applied for a mini grant from the New York-based Ezra Jack Keats Foundation. Murphy, who grew up in Detroit during the Civil Rights Movement, had always opposed segregation and long felt Benton Harbor and its surrounding areas needed to be "de-ghettoized." Unlike librarians in middle-class communities, Murphy put aside traditional library skills and concentrated on being an inner-city librarian focused on outreach and bringing books to kids. "I wanted to connect children to books and to each other," she says. Her vision was to bring students from Benton Harbor and St. Joseph together by painting portraits of each other. Drawing and painting, she explains, not only requires an artistic eye, but a meaningful interaction with your subject. Her ultimate goal? To implement Keats's quote, "If we all could really 'see' each other exactly as the other is, this would be a different world." To her surprise, in November she received a $500 check in the mail. Murphy, who had no experience in teaching art, then turned to me, a long-time friend and a 14-year veteran art teacher of the Benton Harbor School District. After getting approval from my schools, Benton Harbor was in.

We chose to undertake our project at the Benton Harbor Public Library, a handsome structure built during the last burst of prosperity in the 1960s, because it was a neutral site. It helped that the downtown building had a large auditorium for painting, indoor picnics, and a large-screen TV for showing videos. Using a school library in Benton Harbor was not an option—none of the 13 elementary schools have a fully staffed or adequately supplied library.

It was tough going at first. Administrators at the first school district we approached refused to let their students participate in an unproven project during the school day, and the idea of volunteer students traveling to Benton Harbor on Saturdays seemed far-fetched. Then, I called a colleague in more distant Bridgman and pitched my idea. She liked it, and got permission from her school. In fact, Bridgman's response was so enthusiastic, it immediately signed up two classes. We were finally ready to roll out the Portrait Project.

Although the project was ultimately an unqualified success, we were aware that our first chance at turning this into a long-term project could have been our last. Finding a willing partner in the first place was not easy, and we were under no illusions about how difficult it would be to change the status quo. Once prosperous, with foundries and factories offering well-paying jobs, Benton Harbor is plagued with the three "D's": desertion of the industries that once made it prosperous; decay of its housing stock; and a dying downtown. White flight has left a 94 percent black student body, up from 60 percent when I started as an art teacher 28 years ago. Our high school drop-out rate stands at nearly 14 percent, and students' standardized test scores are among the lowest in Michigan. The tiny white enclaves of Benton Harbor, located along the bluffs overlooking Lake Michigan, choose to send their children to parochial, charter, or Montessori schools, rather than to our public schools. Virtually no white students attend Benton Harbor's two magnet schools, although they were created as a way to attract them.

Consequently, there are few chances for our black students to interact with their peers in neighboring school systems in any meaningful way. The isolation of the black and white communities, separated by only a few hundred feet of water, is what we've been accustomed to. Secondary students interact with others only during sporting events, science fairs, and music festivals. Elementary students hardly interact at all. Needless to say, no one was surprised when the parent of a third grader protested that her child was simply too young to be involved in an exchange program of this sort. Lorraine Veldman, a participating third grade teacher from Bridgman spoke for most of us when she replied, "Would you rather we wait until they are 16 or 17 and set in their ways?"

In our first year, 25 third graders from Bridgman spent the day at our library with 25 third graders from Benton Harbor, getting to know each other through art and literature. Although there was resistance and apprehension among some Benton Harbor and Bridgman parents, more turned out than on a school trip to the zoo. We started by introducing the kids—about 100 in all—to the work of Ezra Jack Keats, the first author to feature a black child as the main character in a children's book: The Snowy Day (Viking), winner of the 1963 Caldecott Medal. The Keats foundation awards $40,000 in grants of $350 each year to those with a mission to "instill love of literature to children and to foster literacy and creativity." The foundation's two-sided, one-page grant application couldn't be easier to complete, and the response is surprisingly quick. All they ask for is a brief written report at the end of your project.

A short video and a reading of one of Keats's books set the tone for the day. As things progressed, students grew more relaxed. A "getting to know you" activity soon had them quizzing each other on their likes and dislikes of favorite TV shows, pastimes, and sports. Some of the children's greatest discoveries were, "We are so much alike," "He likes Pokémon and so do I," "Her hair is in braids and so is mine." Laurie Hartzell, a counselor at Bridgman Elementary, said it best by declaring, "I knew we had it made!" after witnessing several newly acquainted boys get into a little mischief together. Visiting parents soon relaxed as they realized the day was going to be a positive experience.

The children were eventually paired with a partner for the main activity — painting portraits of each other. A simple lesson in drawing the human face became a vehicle for more than just learning the proper placement of each feature. Throughout the lesson, we discussed how small differences in eye shape or hair length give us our individual appearance. Painting each others' skin tones helped students realize how similar most people are; just a few drops of brown or white adjusted a pre-mixed base to achieve the right shade. Lunchtime became another lesson in familiarization, as the kids chatted, shared their meals, and gave generously to a student who had forgotten hers. The drawings were soon transformed into colorful paintings, and photos were taken of each pair of artists holding their creations. Two days later, we did a repeat performance with 50 fifth graders.

The artwork was unveiled a few weeks later at a formal opening at the Benton Harbor library. Pairs of portraits were hung side-by-side, along with photos of the artists. The students beamed with pride as they showed their work to family and friends. Many were eager to strike poses with their partners, as proud parents snapped photos. Over the next several months, the portraits were exhibited at each community's library, our school district's administrative offices, and the offices of a local chamber of commerce.

As it turned out, the Portrait Project ended up taking on a life of its own, as Benton Harbor teacher Angela Noble and her Bridgman counterpart Lorraine Veldman expanded it into other activities and settings. Last year, we sought additional funding and enlisted author and illustrator Wil Clay to oversee a book-making project with Benton Harbor and Bridgman students. These students have become pen pals, exchanging letters, books, jokes, holiday greetings, and even valentines.

This school year alone, we've partnered with fourth graders at three school districts. Second and fifth grade students from Creative Arts Academy and Gifted and Talented Academy— two Benton Harbor magnet schools where I teach—spent a day in St. Joseph decorating ginger bread houses and painting a Vincent van Gogh-style mural in a school's hallway. St. Joseph's schools visited their partners in Benton Harbor for art and dance lessons, and students have written short biographies about each other. Artist Tom Woodruff attracted 1,400 kids and adults last fall when he visited for a week to work with Benton Harbor and Lakeshore fourth graders and instructed an evening workshop for teachers and area residents. In February, we're releasing a 48-page Michigan Kid-to-Kid alphabet coloring book, written and illustrated by fourth graders from Lakeshore and Benton Harbor. Complete with full-color cover, the book will be distributed free of charge to all fourth grade students in both districts, as well as to local bookstores and libraries.

Teachers from many neighboring communities are now clamoring to join our newly named "Kid-to-Kid: Diversity Through the Arts" program, and as a result, we've outgrown our space at the public library. We have a new home at the nonprofit organization the Box Factory for the Arts, and frequent artistic projects at various locations are a part of each participating school's annual curriculum. The program has ended up dovetailing with existing state curriculum on art, history, geography, literature, math, and cultural diversity.

While we're unable to quantify the success of our project with hard data, the overwhelming positive feedback from both kids and adults translates into a huge victory. On one evaluation sheet a student wrote, "Actually, I didn't have a least favorite part of the day!" Veldman, a Bridgman teacher, notes that while she had always exposed her students to minority authors, stories, and Black History Month, it was always from a distance. "This project was such a personal experience for all of us," she wrote.

I'm not sure if any friendships have blossomed outside the project, but keep in mind, traveling a few miles is a daunting experience for an elementary student, especially for a family without a car or access to public transportation. One of the saddest evaluations came from a Bridgman girl who was disappointed that she never got to meet her pen pal because her mother refused to let her ride a school bus and didn't bring her to any joint sessions. The two girls finally met later in the year. Veldman says she's about to arrange a children's e-mail exchange program through respective schools, provided there's parental permission.

Our success story, however, has not made it easier to secure additional funds to carry out our expanded program into next year. The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation gave us an initial $500 grant in 1998, followed by $350 in 1999 and 2000. Although we didn't apply in 2001, we received another $350 grant, simply because the foundation wanted to continue to play some role. While that money is helpful, we still need about $10,000 to pay for art supplies and to secure artists to work with students. We were awarded a $4,000 grant from the Michigan Council for the Arts, but a $12,000 challenge grant from the Frederick S. Upton Foundation requires a matching contribution that we're having great difficulty meeting. We've also received smaller grants from the Cornerstone Alliance, the Association of Retarded Citizens, the Berrien County Intermediate School District, the Boulevard Inn, and American Electric Power, as well as interested private citizens. At this stage, it looks like we can only afford to continue the initial Portrait Project, but that's still much better then nothing. "It's a shoestring budget, but anyone can do it and the results and interaction are amazing," Murphy says.

My advice for those who want to try this? Remember, it's the partnership between the teachers and our local librarian that is the heart and soul of this project. The books, the paintings, and the artists are simply the inspiration. Find teachers who really want their students to connect with each other on an ongoing basis. Plan initial encounters that require minimal teacher/librarian input, so the kids can focus on getting to know each other. Then just keep bouncing ideas off your colleagues either by e-mail, telephone, or over an informal dinner.

"Watching the children hold hands, share candy and food, find common interests, laugh about their mistakes when painting… just finding out they had so much in common, were delights to us," Veldman says. "We are already seeing growth [in the project] by the number of schools interested in joining."