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.” 46