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Abby Jeffries '17

Sculpting Peace in Our Community: Working Three-Dimensionally with Elementary School Children Through a Summer Art Camp Curriculum

Major/minor: Early Childhood Education and Psychology
Hometown: Washington, NJ
Project mentor: Dr. Kristin Baxter

Project Details:

1. Briefly describe your SOAR project.
   We developed a four-day sculpture art camp curriculum with the central theme of peace for students in grades 3-8. The curriculum consisted of 13 lessons and our schedule, books, sources, and ideas for the week. Then, we ran the camp with 15 students and created an art show at the end.
    
2. What motivated you to participate in SOAR? 
   Being an education major brought on my huge desire to participate in this SOAR program. This program gave me tremendous experience with creating lessons, preparing them, and actually teaching them to a class full of students. I wanted to do something where I made a difference and I truly believe I did through this project.
    
3. What are the results of your work on this project? 
   The result of our project was an overwhelming result of love for the camp. The students really invested themselves in their artwork and loved the sculpture aspect of camp. They preferred using their hands and sculpting to drawing and 2-dimensional activities. They also loved that there was a theme throughout the week, and that made each activity better thanks to the history we shared with the students and the colorful posters and books throughout the room.
    
4. What are your personal takeaways from the project? And do you plan to continue work on this project after SOAR? 
   This experience was truly an amazing one for me and I am so thankful to be a part of such a wonderful program. I learned and gained so much knowledge about my field of study and was able to do what I want to do as my profession already in my first year of college. I would love to be able to keep the tradition going and continue on with having another art camp next year. This was the third year doing the art camp for the SOAR program and it has grown very popular in the town. Quite frankly, I believe the students would be very sad if there was no camp next year since they made it very clear to us that they look forward to it every year!

Biographical Information:

1. What clubs/sports/activities/community service are you involved in? 
   I am on the softball team, a 26 points ambassador, a student worker in admissions, member of SAAC, and I am on coach's council for softball.
    
2. Have you received any awards/recognitions here? 
   I have been on the dean’s list for 2 semesters.
    
3. Briefly, what are your future plans and career goals? 
   I plan to continue my love for educating by becoming an elementary school teacher.