inspiring with art

I have to share an experience teaching art. I'm the art docent for my main placement class; on Friday, I taught a lesson on Keith Haring, who is well known for the subway art he created in New York. If you want a great subject to do an art lesson on, look into Keith Haring. I read portions of a picture book to give the students some background on the artist, and for the entire time, everyone paid attention. For the actual project, I took a sheet of 8 x 11 black construction paper, taped it to a piece of 11 x 18 construction paper (to protect the walls) then taped the paper to the hallway walls - some up really high, some low. The students pretended we were in a subway station and their assignment was to create a work of art using chalk that would tell a story. Later, students would guess the stories behind their classmates' artwork, then share their own. I was surprised at how enthusiastic everyone was, and it was great that so many of them came up to me afterwards to tell me how much fun it was.