Q Life Magazine Q Magazine (US) December 2015 | Page 46
| Issue 1
Learning
Through Art
How can we teach our children to empathize with others?
Prism.K12, an award-winning educational teaching framework
developed by The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., has an
answer: through art. And it’s bringing it to children nationwide,
thanks to key supporters like the Embassy of the State of Qatar.
T
o encourage their pupils to understand another
person’s thoughts and emotions, second-grade
teachers Norah Mallaney and Jermia Huff at Inspired
Teaching Demonstration School, a public charter
school in Washington, D.C., led them through a series
of exercises based around paintings in The Phillips
Collection. After studying some powerful portraits by
Vincent van Gogh, the seven-year-olds and eight-year-
olds worked in pairs to imagine two emotional sides
of a fictional character.
The results are striking. One pair of students painted the
interior lives of Harry Potter. Another pair created the
moving pictures Happy Superman and Sad Superman.
This is just one exercise in the “Empathy” strand
of Prism.K12, one of several teaching kits developed
by The Phillips Collection and used by thousands of
children, teachers, and families across the country every
year. The President’s Commission on the Arts and the
Humanities says this approach works to “expand arts
opportunities, engage students more deeply in learning
content, and is an effective school reform strategy.”
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