When my daughter was in elementary school, she brought home a letter informing us she was going to be working on a project. “A project, Mom!” She beamed with excitement, toting a book with a happy panda on the cover.
The word project strikes fear in the heart of parents everywhere, particularly those with more than one child. This was my third go-round with this project. She was to read a nonfiction book about an animal and then create a diorama to celebrate what she had learned.
Clearly, discussions about pandas were in my future.
Full disclosure: I really am a big fan of being “crafty.” I can adequately sew, quilt, cross-stitch, and crochet. I’ve attended local “Wine and Canvas” painting nights. I’ve been a scrapbooker. I’ve learned to make my own jewelry, and for that I now have a box of fancy beads, wires and tools and…one crooked pair of earrings. One of my Pinterest boards is devoted to the hundreds of things I’m eventually going to make, paint, sew, glue, and create in my spare time.
Even so, the thought of making a diorama with my daughter made me a bit queasy.
Now, before you start sending disapproving e-mails, please understand that I know art has a place in school. I’ve been to all the staff development on brain research. I’ve differentiated according to learning style in my classroom. Honest, I get it.
However, this was more. These dioramas would be on display. This ramps up the apprehension and concern considerably.
It’s no secret to any experienced parent that this project wasn’t really a student project. I’d seen the dioramas from previous years proudly displayed on Parent Night. At the unveiling of the class dioramas there would be plenty of moms and dads patting their child on the back for their beautiful rendition of a wildebeest habitat, complete with holding pond, a small stream, and live trees—while turning up their noses at the projects that were clearly created by students with less crafty parents, with their visible glue, smudges, and descriptions scrawled in crayon on loose-leaf paper.
I had a small panic attack at the thought of providing guidance to my daughter in making a diorama for panda in his natural habitat. (Assuming we would learn pandas live in shoeboxes.)
This project would require me to scavenge a shoebox (“small, and in good condition”) and also require no less than three financially debilitating trips to the craft store. You can’t buy just three green pipe cleaners, you must buy the entire package in a rainbow of colors. You can’t just use regular green construction paper, you must buy the fancy paper that actually looks like leaves. Who doesn’t cherish the thought of standing in the craft store paper aisle with a tearful child frantically looking for paper covered in bamboo leaves?
As an educator, I take issue with this type of project for a different reason: relevancy. Show me the adult who finishes a novel, a biography, or an article in Time magazine and proceeds to turn to another person and say, “Wow, that was fascinating. I’d love to share it with you. I need to make a quick trip to the craft store, but I’ll have a diorama ready for you tomorrow by noon.”
Did my daughter learn about pandas? Yes. She read her panda book with reverence and gusto three times. She made a list of the environmental needs of pandas. This work took about 30 minutes. Creating the diorama took more than a week from planning to completion.
Every night she worked on the project while I fought the urge to push her aside to do it for her. I reminded her again and again that this was to be her work, not mine. She raised her eyebrow suspiciously, but soldiered on. After tears and a meltdown requiring ice cream for both of us, I gave in and assisted.
Clay lumps wouldn’t hold the trees and brush in place, so we went to the craft store to purchase industrial-strength glue. The glue wouldn’t hold the pipe cleaner trees and bushes in place either, so we gave up and used staples. Unfortunately, staples are not skin friendly. Anyone who held the completed project was in serious danger of bleeding to death from staple piercings.
Granted, she learned from this project. She learned that when clay doesn’t work to use glue. When glue doesn’t work, use staples. She learned that the use of staples creates a need for bandages. She learned that a 5-inch stuffed panda is difficult to display to scale in a 6-inch high shoebox.
What did she learn about pandas? She’ll tell you she learned pandas eat bamboo, and they aren’t really bears. This is good knowledge to have.
Julie Scullen is a former president of the Minnesota Reading Association and Minnesota Secondary Reading Interest Council and is a current member of the International Literacy Association Board of Directors. She taught most of her career in Secondary Reading Intervention classrooms and now serves as Teaching and Learning Specialist for Secondary Reading in Anoka-Hennepin schools in Minnesota, working with teachers of all content areas to foster literacy achievement. She teaches graduate courses at Hamline University in St. Paul in Literacy Leadership and Coaching, as well as Reading Assessment and Evaluation.