SJHS Staff Writer
This year during the middle of October, the 7th grade art classes at Springville Junior High School folded, wrote, and burned their secrets. Jethro Gillespie, the art teacher at SJHS, told the students that they would be doing a project that involved writing down their secrets. The students brought colorful paper to school and they folded origami boxes. They then wrote down some of their secrets that they didn’t want anyone to know, put them into the boxes, and then they burned them out in the courtyard of SJHS.
Mr. Gillespie decided to repeat this activity this year because “the students responded very positively.” He liked doing it last year, so he decided to do it again for the enjoyment of the students and himself. “It’s a conceptual approach to art, which is very new to many seventh graders,” he explained. He continued to say that it helps empowers the artist, in this case the student, to be thinkers, instead of just listening to the assignment and doing what the teacher assigned. They get to think outside the box.
Students formed a heart out of their boxes.The students also liked it a lot. “It was really fun,” Courtney Taylor, a 7th grader at SJHS, said. She found that folding the boxes was difficult, but she liked it when they got to burn them.
Seventh grade students standing around the garbage can where they are burning their boxes.Mr. Gillespie wants to do it again next year. “The kids responded well to this activity, especially the fire,” he pointed out. The students also suggested it for future seventh graders. “They’ll enjoy it a lot,” Courtney Taylor explained.
The students and teacher really enjoyed this activity. The teacher enjoyed showing the students how to make oragami boxes, and the students enjoyed burning them. They loved knowing their secrets wouldn’t be read by other eyes, and that gave them a sense of security and love for art.
